Repost, different list...File::Spec, cygwin, Syntactic vs. Semantic path analysis

[Shankar Unni]

linda w (cyg) wrote:

> 	What were the _original_ design goals of Cygwin -- i.e. as 
> sponsored by "RedHat"?

Cygwin predates RedHat. See http://cygwin.com/history.html  (the 
earliest date in the file is Dec 1995). RedHat bought Cygnus Solutions 
(which was a shop for commercial support for GNU software, especially 
GCC ports to obscure and new platforms), which did the original Cygwin work.

Anyone at RedHat from the original Cygwin team (the last warriors of the 
(in)famous "Beta 20" :-)?) wanna answer this?

There's an interesting line in the early changelogs:

    Release Beta 8
    [...]
    Much nicer way of describing paths, eg //c/foo is c:\foo.

Suggests that the early goal *was* to provide a POSIX-y view, and the 
exposing of Windows paths was added as a convenience..