Re: Question about packaging and cygport

[Adam Dinwoodie <adam at dinwoodie dot org>]

On Fri, 28 Jun 2019 at 11:56, Arjen Markus wrote:
> In the context of the PLplot project (plplot.sf.net) we are interested
> in the details of how software is packaged for Cygwin, in particular
> how CMake is packaged (development of this package is rather fast and
> we attempt to keep up with it, so that we can clean up the various
> workarounds).
>
> To better understand the process, we would like to know, how packaging
> is arranged - is that via "cygport" files? And if so, what is the
> authorative location of these files (notably cmake.cygport)? If some
> other method is used, could you enllighten us about the actual
> process?

Cygport provides a way for maintainers to build packages that are
compatible with the Cygwin package distribution tools, so most
maintainers use it, but I think there are still a few packages that
are maintained without cygport; provided maintainers upload packages
that are compatible with the package distribution tools used by the
Cygwin project, maintainers are free to use whatever tools they like.
In the specific case of cmake, that package does use cygport, but it's
not guaranteed that all packages will.

The only authoritative source of these files will be the source
package downloads you can get through the Cygwin installer, by ticking
the "Src?" box in the setup-(x86|x86_64).exe installer. Those are only
guaranteed to include the source code itself, but for any package
using cygport, you can expect they'll also include the cygport file
and any associated files. There's no general repository for the
packaging tools and configuration other than that which maintainers
have uploaded to provide via the packaging distribution mirrors. Some
maintainers will keep their cygport files on GitHub or similar (I do),
but that's entirely down to the preferences of the individual
maintainer, and I don't know where – or even if – the cmake cygport
files are available anywhere else.

Adam

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