kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@...>]

Dick Hollenbeck wrote:
> stambaughw wrote:
>> --- In kicad-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Dick Hollenbeck <dick@...> wrote:
>> 
>>> Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Dick Hollenbeck wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>> <<< snipped >>>
>>
>> 
>>> I am fearful of git for a number of reasons, one of which is that casual 
>>> windows builders would be tormented with installing git. Having to 
>>> install Cygwin, perl, bash, to run git, is a non-starter for most 
>>> Windows users, it is a main reason why I pushed so hard for CMAKE. I 
>>> hate Windows, hate it even more with Cygwin on it. Plus frankly, with 
>>> git, I think that we could easily fall into a trap of idolizing the 
>>> Linux project as "the right way to do everything". I don't want any 
>>> part of that.
>>> 
>> Dick,
>>
>> I thought you might find this interesting. I stumbled upon it while messing around with Bazaar. From the Bazaar documentation page <http://doc.bazaar-vcs.org/latest/en/user-guide/installing_bazaar.html>: "Note: If you are running Cygwin on Windows, a Bazaar for Cygwin package is available and ought to be used instead of the Windows version". After a bit more digging, I found this: <https://blueprints.launchpad.net/bzr/+spec/case-insensitive-filesystems>. It appears that Bazaar doesn't cleanly handle case insensitive file names. For developers using only windows, there is no issue. However, for those of us who switch between the two environments there may be issues unless you stick with the Cygwin version. Subversion seems to handle this fairly well as I have not experienced any problems switching between the two platforms.
>>
>> Wayne
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> Is there any part of the windows Kicad build process that requires 
> Cygwin (not including needed libraries)?

No.

> Which needed libraries require it? (I swear I built the windows stuff 
> using only msys a couple of years ago when I finished off the initial 
> windows CMake support.)

You still can. Things have actually improved quite a bit on that front
with the latest MinGW/msys updates including gcc 4.4 and autotools.

> The best thing we can do for Cygwin users is to get them to the point 
> where they don't need Cygwin at all. 
> 
> ----------
> 
> 
> I am loosing some of my enthusiasm for carrying water for Windows, made 
> even far worse with Cygwin on it. Cygwin is a contortion, and if you 
> like it, fine. No amount of persuasion will change my view :)

I lost my enthusiasm for Windows a long time ago. It will not go away
soon enough for me. Unfortunately, the rest of the world doesn't view
it my way. So for the foreseeable future we will have to support it.

> If we were simply to make nightly builds, then the folks we've refered 
> to as "windows builders" would not need to build.
> 
> And eventually I would like to get to a point where we can build the 
> windows binaries from Linux. We are almost there, and I will not give 
> up. I just don't have enough time right now.
> 
> I also want to de-emphasize my earlier remarks about the distributed VCS 
> needing to be windows builders friendly. I've since realized that a 
> nightly tar file or binary could address that. 
> 
> You can and should do the same. I checked out a big project, then 
> changed one source file. And from the root of the project asked bazaar 
> to give me a diff on all files within the project and it found the 
> change immediately. (I'm reneging on my commitment to set up a sandbox, 
> since we can use any old project at launchpad.)
> 
> If your main concern with bazaar is speed, I should say that I played 
> with it a little last week and it seems more than fast enough.

I loaded Bazaar 2.0 on Linux at home over the weekend and played around
with it and didn't find speed to be an issue. It seems a lot faster
than the last time I used it. I didn't find it any worse than
Subversion so that's good.

> I really do not like the oddball version numbering system in git, and it 
> seems that bazaar is handling re-naming better. The scale is still 
> teetering, but the two aforementioned issues are definite advantages in 
> favor of bazaar.
> 
> It seems either would be an improvement, so there is probably no reason 
> to panic either way. We'd be advancing the ball in any case.
> 
> But my main point of this is that I have little sympathy for anyone who 
> chooses to use Cygwin, zero. And the sympathy I do have is probably the 
> kind you have for a person of which you do not even understand their 
> behavior.

I'm no big fan of Cygwin. There are a few useful tools that still don't
build on MinGW. For me it is namely rsync. The other annoying thing
about MinGW/msys is man pages do not work very well. Once those two
issues are resolved, Cygwin will come off my machine.

Wayne

> 
> 
> Dick