what about 'Debian GNU/GygWin' ?

[Andrea Mennucc1 <debian at Tonelli dot sns dot it>]

hello  to all the CygWin developers.

I am a regular GNU/Linux user.

I have just met (and briefly used)
the CygWin environment, and I am positively impressed.

I see that CygWin has grown much lately,
and it has now the same size as a small Linux distribution;
this has naturally brought you to using a "packaging system":
(I obviusly mean:
dividing the software in packages, that may singolarly installed
or updated). 

As the number of packages increases, the  "packaging system"
needs to become more complex (to comply to many problems
like "dependencies" and "conflicts" between packages).
 
At this stage, I see an interesting perspective for CygWin:
CygWin may indeed adhere to one of the main existing "packaging systems",
like RedHat RPMs or Debian DEBs

I would suggest the latter, for these reasons

1) DEBs packages are somewhat more flexibles and powerfuls than RPMs, and the
 "apt" tool (that is the user front end for installs and upgrades) 
 is very "intelligent"
  (it is able to upgrade from Debian 1.3, which was a libc5 system, 
   to Debian 2.2 , that is a libc6, with almost no fuss)

2) Debian is already developed for 11 architectures:
 GNU/Linux  GNU/Hurd GNU/PowerPC GNU/Alpha...
 What I am proposing may be called "Debian GNU/CygWin"

3) I am a (prospective) Debian mantainer :-)

4) Debian is a big distribution, with many people and many 
  packages: if only a small part of the Debian community will
  ever start porting packages to  "Debian GNU/CygWin";
  this would anyway mean a lot to CygWin

5) (I seem to understand that) Debian contains 
  already some cross-arch stuff that would help the Debian mantainers
  to build packages for  "Debian GNU/CygWin";
  
  
I hope to start a nice discussion with this mail;
there are indeed a lot of points to discuss

if the CygWin community will eventually 
be interested in this  "Debian GNU/CygWin" idea,
I am willing to propose and sponsor  "Debian GNU/CygWin"
in the Debian community.

a.m.


-- 
Andrea C. Mennucc1

--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com