Re: How much work is a native Windows application?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pgsql-hackers-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org
> [mailto:pgsql-hackers-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org]On Behalf Of Marc G. Fournier
> Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 12:04 AM
> To: Tom Lane
> Cc: mlw; PostgreSQL-development
> Subject: Re: [HACKERS] How much work is a native Windows application?
>
>
> On Tue, 7 May 2002, Tom Lane wrote:
>
> > It'd be worth trying to understand cygwin issues in detail before we
> > sign up to do and support a native Windows port. I understand the
> > user-friendliness objection to cygwin (though one would think proper
> > packaging might largely hide cygwin from naive Windows users). What I
> > don't understand is whether there are any serious performance lossages
> > from it, and if so whether we could work around them.
>
> Actually, there are licensing issues involved ... we could never put a
> 'windows binary' up for anon-ftp, since to distribute it would require the
> cygwin.dll to be distributed, and to do that, there is a licensing cost
> ... of course, I guess we could require ppl to download cygwin seperately,
> install that, then install the binary over top of that ...

>From http://cygwin.com/licensing.html:

"""
In accordance with section 10 of the GPL, Red Hat permits programs whose
sources are distributed under a license that complies with the Open Source
definition to be linked with libcygwin.a without libcygwin.a itself causing
the resulting program to be covered by the GNU GPL.

This means that you can port an Open Source(tm) application to cygwin, and
distribute that executable as if it didn't include a copy of libcygwin.a
linked into it. Note that this does not apply to the cygwin DLL itself. If
you distribute a (possibly modified) version of the DLL you must adhere to
the terms of the GPL, i.e. you must provide sources for the cygwin DLL.

See http://www.opensource.org/osd.html for the precise Open Source
Definition referenced above.
"""

Not following this exactly, but would this give PG the exception it needs
(my eyes start to glaze over on stuff like this)? Anyone from RedHat still
on this list?

In any event, if PG can't release a PG+Cygwin in one package, we could
maintain a official web page about how to get PG running under Cygwin that
walks through exactly what to install, how to install, and how to set up.

There are some notes at http://www.ca.postgresql.org/docs/faq-mswin.html,
but these are assuming that you want to build PG, rather than simply install
PG from the cygwin packages.

I'd be very willing to help with this effort, once there's some consensus on
what direction we want to head.

- J.

Joel BURTON | joel(at)joelburton(dot)com | joelburton.com | aim: wjoelburton
Knowledge Management & Technology Consultant