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Subject: Re: cmp missing from base
From: Warren Young <wyml AT etr-usa DOT com>
In-Reply-To: <572C697E.1090408@towo.net>
Date: Fri, 6 May 2016 19:41:21 -0600
Message-Id: <29250DCF-60A0-4113-9834-25EA744E8F41@etr-usa.com>
References: <572C697E DOT 1090408 AT towo DOT net>
To: The Cygwin Mailing List <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
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On May 6, 2016, at 3:53 AM, Thomas Wolff <towo AT towo DOT net> wrote:
> 
> after a recent fresh installation of cygwin, I was surprised that `cmp` was missing, which is part of the traditional Unix base commands.
> I think the diffutils package should be part of the base installation.

We’ve never really had a hard rule on what is in Base and what isn’t.  It’s always been a judgement call.

I wonder if the rule should just be “POSIX”?  That is, if it’s on this page, it should be in Base:

  http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/idx/utilities.html

That would exclude other things we’ve always excluded, such as Perl.

I’m not suggesting that we make this rule a strict one.  Most importantly, it cannot be an exclusion rule: Cygwin must contain things not in POSIX.  I’m just suggesting that it would be nice if Cygwin were as close to POSIX as practical out-of-the-box.

By that latter, I mean without extra effort other than adjusting some setup.hint files.  I mean, if there is a command on that list that doesn’t even have a Cygwin package, I don’t mean to propose with this rule that someone must go out and package it just to satisfy POSIX.

As a counterexample, that list contains pax(1), which is currently in Archive, not Base, so by that rule, pax(1) should also move to Base.

By that very example, though, I can argue against this proposed rule: as I understand it, pax(1) was added to POSIX at the same time they dropped cpio(1) and tar(1), thinking that by doing so, they’d change existing practice, moving everyone over to pax(1).  That just created a Standard in the XKCD sense:

  https://xkcd.com/927/
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