Distributing Cygwin DLLs with my app

[Dave Bryan]

Igor

Thanks very much for your reply. I appreciate your time and the points you  
raised.

Regards
Dave


> On Thu, 23 Feb 2006, Dave Bryan wrote:
>
>> I have an application for Windows written in VC++ which spawns the GNU
>> tools GCC, LD, etc. As the GNU programs use the Cygwin DLLs I need those
>> also. Is is possible to distribute just the needed Cygwin DLLs with my
>> app + GNU tools rather than the complete Cygwin installation ? There
>> would be no cost to customers for Cygwin & GCC, just my VC++ app
>
> IANAL (<http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#YANALATEYHSMBSI>), but as far as I
> understand, the GPL does allow such distribution, as long as you are also
> distributing sources for the GPL'd tools.  For further licensing
> questions, please use the cygwin-licensing list.
>
> However, it's good that you asked here, because another point of concern
> with such distributions is to make sure you don't become a
> <http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#3PP> by not playing nicely with the existing
> Cygwin installations.  As long as your distribution/installer detects an
> existing installation and uses its DLLs and tools instead of the ones you
> provide (or asks for an upgrade if the tools are too old), you should be
> ok.
>
> It would also be nice if you explicitly stated in the documentation that
> you use Cygwin under the covers as part of your toolchain, so that
> installing Cygwin later will not produce unpleasant surprises.  The best
> way of doing this is to install into a standard location rather than the
> location of your program (e.g., test for an existing installation, and if
> it's not there, install the minimal set of packages in c:\cygwin,
> preferably using Cygwin's installer or something with equal
> functionality).  That way, if the users later decide to install Cygwin,
> your minimal installation will be detected and upgraded.
>
> You can even present this as a choice for the users (like some products  
> do
> with things like Acrobat Reader or DirectX) -- if Cygwin is not detected,
> offer to install it, and spawn Cygwin setup for doing the minimal install
> from your distribution CD.  Fortunately, Cygwin is easy to detect.
>
> HTH,
> 	Igor



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