Backwards compatibility

[Laurens Blankers]

Hi,

I was wondering what the Cygwin community thinks about maintaining 
backwards compatibility, especially regarding configuration files when 
updating or changing a package. As a long time Debian user I have grown 
accustomed to upgrades going very smoothly, backwards compatibility with 
previous setups being maintained, and smooth, well documented, and 
mostly automatic migrations if compatibility can't be maintained. What, 
if any, is the policy regarding upgrades for Cygwin?

I did search through the Cygwin documention and couldn't find this 
information. If I overlooked something I apologize in advance. Please 
point me to the appropriate document.

Of course this question doesn't come out of the blue. It is triggered by 
the release of xinit 1.3.4-1 last month, which breaks setups for many 
people. If you like you can check the cygwin-xfree mailing list. 
Unfortunately the responds from the package maintainers has been: The 
way it has worked for years was a bug, your setup is wrong. Which would 
be fine if there was documentation on how to do this, or even a way to 
do this, but there is neither. There seems to be a general unwillingness 
among the maintainers to acknowledge that user experience matters.

Before you ask, yes, I did post this to the cygwin-xfree mailing list. 
However I am not getting anywhere there. So I am interested in the 
thoughts of the wider, beyond X11, Cygwin community on backwards 
compatibility.

Thanks,

Laurens Blankers

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