On Friday 03 February 2006 14:08, Larrie Carr wrote: > As I dig through the archives, I see this topic coming up > from time to time. However, I don't understand the history > behind why cygwin is not supported using the standard build > scripts.
I think I can explain. Most of the developers choose one system to do most of the work in. In Free software circles, it is usually a Free operating system, usually either Linux or BSD. There are several distributions of each, that have minor style differences. None of us actually test on all of the systems that the software works on. There are too many. The official distribution is in source form, so you must compile it to install it. I know mine works on my system. Most Linux and BSD variants are similar enough that I have high confidence there too. The farther away it gets, the lower the confidence is. We freely use other free software, such as gtk, guile, python, and others. On most of our systems, either we already have it or it is trivial to install. If not, you might need to install more stuff. We are strict about the requirement that everything required is also free. The packages for particular distributions are done by someone else other than the people developing the software. These packages are ready to install. They do not contain all of the needed libraries, but instead contain information needed to find them, in such a way that the installer will automatically find and install the needed extras. Some of them are maintained by people here on this list. One individual usually maintains several applications, perhaps all of gEDA and the related tools, on a single platform. Some of the packages are available with the official OS distribution. Some are available from other sites. Please note again, they are done by someone else other than the people who created the software. Maintaining these packages is a ongoing effort. Every time the source package is updated, the binary package must also be updated. Some distributions just do the stable releases. Some track the development snapshots. Some do both. So, when you ask about a platform that isn't officially supported, we are waiting for someone to step up and do it. This statement applies to a native MS-Windows port too. We don't deliberately block it. We are just waiting for someone to take on the project.
