RE: [PATCH] Move path_prefix_p declaration from cygheap.h to path.h

["Gary R. Van Sickle" <g dot r dot vansickle at worldnet dot att dot net>]

> On Mon, Oct 15, 2001 at 10:09:55PM -0500, Gary R. Van Sickle wrote:
> >> Ok.  Lets just stop the discussion right here.
> >>
> >> I will deal with the issue of header file inclusion.
> >>
> >> I'm not asking for a discussion of everyone's idea of the best way to
> >> handle things.  I don't want to go down that rat hole.
> >
> >Mr.  Faylor, I apologize if I have, in some manner which escapes me,
> >offended you or anyone else involved in the Cygwin project, a project
> >which I find inestimably valuable both personally and to the computing
> >community as a whole.  I was merely attempting to volunteer my services
> >to abate deficiencies we both saw in the project.
>
> I'm not offended! I appreciate what you're trying to do.  I probably
> should have said that before.  I just don't want to have a header file
> discussion.  I've had way too many header file discussions in my life.
>

Again I apologize, I was not aware that this issue had been over-discussed,
nor that anyone had taken ownership of the issue.  No, I didn't search the
archives.  Just to clarify, I wasn't trying to start a discussion on this or
any topic - again, I was volunteering to make some mechanical changes which
I believed would make maintenance of the project easier, and spelling out
what I proposed to do.

> I'm aware of all of the pros and cons of the various ways of handling
> things and I'll eventually do something about it.
>
> IMO, the only way to handle this type of situation is to have one person
> make the decision.  That would be me.  And, I *will* eventually get
> to this issue.
>

I had and have no intention of stepping on anyone's toes.  There is no
question in my mind, nor should there be in anyone else's, that you will get
to it (Lord, look at what you've[1] done already!).

And I apologize if you took my explanation as condescending; it was in no
way intended as such.

[1] To others who may be reading, that is in no way to be construed as
meaning Chris did it all.  But I *do* see a lot of "Christopher Faylor"s in
those changelogs ;-).

> Gary, if you are looking for a contribution to the the project that would
> make a lot of difference to a lot of people, then the documentation is
> in real need of work.  People keep sticking their heads up to volunteer
> and then disappearing.
>

Well, Corinna has annointed me "Maintainer of the mutt" ;-), and I can tell
from the problem reports that I'm not the only one using it ;-)).  I am
currently working on getting 1.3.x to &^%$ing build and install properly.
So I hope that at least makes some difference to some people.

The reason I may appear to be "hunting around for more work" is simply that
I sometimes need a break from build after build of mutt that's wedged (or
rather the openjade, sgmltools-lite, etc that it needs at this point).

Unfortunately, I don't think I will stick my head up to do docs either,
because not only would I also probably be a significant flight risk, the
last I heard the docs were all SGML, of which I know less than I do about
HTML, of which about all I know is that it shows up in my browser window
;-).  However, come Hell or high water, I *will* get sgmltools-lite to
build, so maybe that can get added to the distro and be of assistance to
whoever does stick their head up and doesn't duck.

> For a programming task, ensuring that setup.exe is in a solid state for
> use with the new category/dependency stuff would both be immensely
> valuable.
>
> Another thing that I've mentioned in the past is rationalizing the
> option handling of all of the utilities in winsup/utils.  I'd like
> everything to use getopt_long eventually.
>

I actually looked into doing this, but it appeared that somebody had beaten
me to it.  On reading this at work today, I looked a little closer, and it
seems that there is in fact still work to do there.  I'll tackle this; in
fact I've already started on ssp, which looks to need the most help.  Expect
some patches in a few days (and I'll get that assignment form to you).

> Or, maybe Robert would like some input on his cygwin/daemon code.
>
> The time/timezone handling is in need of some inspection.  We should come
> up with a way to transition to the linux-way of handling timezones without
> breaking legacy cygwin apps.
>
> If you are looking for a contribution to the project that would make a
> lot of difference to *me*, then either keeping an eye out on the cygwin
> mailing list for bugs that need fixing and getting up to speed on fixing
> them would be great.  Even some of the bugs reported in cygwin-developers
> are "I don't have time to fix this" variety.
>

I'll keep those in mind too (although it seems to me that Robert's probably
got a pretty good handle on what he's doing).

> (Btw, if you want to join cygwin-developers, I'll approve you)
>

I would, thank you.  If this thread needs to continue, maybe we can move it
there then too; I've think we've left the realm of discussing a particular
patch ;-).

I didn't see anything on the mailing list page about me having to do
something to make this happen; do you just add my address?  If so, if you
could add both this one and my work one (tiberius at braemarinc dot com) I'd
appreciate it.  If it's one-to-a-customer, just this one will be fine.

> I very much don't want this to be one of those "Well, *I* tried to help
> with Cygwin development and Chris shot me down"
> cygwin-mailing-list-true-life-confesssions.  I appreciate that you're
> trying to help.  That is extremely rare in cygwin-land.
>

Thank you, and I don't want that either.  Having my ideas or proposals or
even my offers of assistance turned down is not at issue though; ol' Gair's
skin is thick enough to tolerate a bit of rejection every once in a while.
What bothers me is, "Ok.  Lets just stop the discussion right here", which I
take as: I ask, "I heard you needed a hand.  Can I help here?", and I read,
"Yeah, by sitting down, shutting up, and getting out of the way".

Now perhaps my skin isn't as thick as I like to think it is, or I simply
took what you said the wrong way.  But a simple "No thanks, I got it" would
have more than sufficed, I should think.

--
Gary R. Van Sickle
Brewer.  Patriot.