On 3/16/2011 3:32 PM, Christopher Faylor wrote: > On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 08:29:51PM +0100, Christian Franke wrote: >> An alternative would be to modify cygutils+dos2unix packages such that >> the user can select the flavor of dos2unix/unix2dos commands with >> /usr/sbin/alternatives. If cygutils is the default if installed this >> should not break anything.
Except you would no longer be able to run dos2unix/unix2dos/d2u/u2d from a non-cygwin context, such as 'naked' cmd.exe or some IDE like Eclipse. > Hey, good idea, assuming that Chuck is amenable. I'd be happy to just > let the package in given that proviso if so. Uh, let's think about that a minute. cygutils is pulled in as part of Base (cygutils is not in the Base category, but it is required by a packages that is: cygwin-doc). Adding alternatives as a dep of cygutils would then make alternatives an implicit part of Base. alternatives itself brings in no other unsavory dependencies. This would be a change, since although alternatives is used by some very common packages [vim, automake], it's not in the default Base-"only" (actually, Base+requirements) installation. It also means that cygwin's dos2unix could no longer be executed from a non-cygwin context, because of the symlinks. Finally, Eric Blake already referenced this possibility, I think: "I see no reason to repackage it as an alternative build." If everybody else is ok with that, then I have no objections...but I think we should hear from folks about these (possible) issues before making a decision. -- Chuck