On 06/01/2026 16:05, J.H. vd Water via Cygwin-patches wrote:
Renaming macro AC_ARG_WITH([cross_bootstrap] to AC_ARG_WITH([skip_mingw], in
order to avoid confusion ...
About 10 years ago, Foley (a] was "messing around" with a stage1 gcc compiler
for
Cygwin, and decided to rebuild cygwin1.dll, as he required only cygwin1.dll.
He did not like to rebuild assets, like cygcheck, strace, for which he was
forced
to install mingw-runtime (then: mingw-crt) and the MinGW toolchain.
To meet his intention, Foley decided to change the AC_ARG_WITH([mingw_progs]
macro
in winsup/configure.ac; he not only changed the option name of the macro, he
also
inverted the meaning of the --with-FOO switch (as Foley also inverted both
tests
that follow the macro) ...
with-FOO changed from: "Hunt for mingw" ... to "do NOT hunt for mingw".
Thanks for looking into this. And thanks for providing a patch.
Yes, this is all messed up!
This all looks fine.
I think changing the option name is the best approach, as it's just
completely unclear what it means either way around, and would be even
more confusing if we suddenly inverted its meaning.
But how do you feel about reverting to the previous name
'--without-mingw-progs' (this exactly matches what the logic does now,
since the extra things that '--with(out?)-cross_bootstrap' was omitting
have been unconditionally removed in the meantime)?
Originally:
AC_ARG_WITH([mingw_progs], ...
if test "x$with_mingw_progs" != xno; then
Hunt for mingw
Foley:
AC_ARG_WITH([cross_bootstrap], ...
if test "x$with_cross_bootstrap" != "xyes"; then
Hunt for mingw
Foley changed the option name of the macro to "cross-bootstrap", which confused
not
only Corinna V. [2], but is still confusing to everyone today!
A better name would have been: "skip_mingw".
Once more: by --withOUT cross-bootstrap, Foley meant: Hunt for mingw
(contrary to
how the switch is usually interpreted) ...
[1]
-
https://cygwin.com/cgit/newlib-cygwin/commit/winsup/configure.ac?id=e7e6119241d02241c3d114cff037340c12245393
( Rename without-mingw-progs to with-cross-bootstrap ) ... 2016-04-02
[2]
-
https://cygwin.com/cgit/cygwin-htdocs/commit/faq/faq.html?id=9d693eea564ec608569c2f5d78536827e99f1661
( Cygwin 3.5.0 release ) ... 2024-02-01
Therefore I suggest to change the option name of the macro into "skip_mingw" ,
as
follows:
