diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'winsup/doc/what.texinfo')
| -rw-r--r-- | winsup/doc/what.texinfo | 90 |
1 files changed, 0 insertions, 90 deletions
diff --git a/winsup/doc/what.texinfo b/winsup/doc/what.texinfo deleted file mode 100644 index 36954967f..000000000 --- a/winsup/doc/what.texinfo +++ /dev/null @@ -1,90 +0,0 @@ -@chapter What is it? - -The Cygwin tools are ports of the popular GNU development tools -for Windows NT, 95, and 98. They run thanks to the Cygwin library which -provides the UNIX system calls and environment these programs expect. - -With these tools installed, it is possible to write Win32 console or -GUI applications that make use of the standard Microsoft Win32 API -and/or the Cygwin API. As a result, it is possible to easily -port many significant Unix programs without the need -for extensive changes to the source code. This includes configuring -and building most of the available GNU software (including the packages -included with the Cygwin development tools themselves). Even if -the development tools are of little to no use to you, you may have -interest in the many standard Unix utilities provided with the package. -They can be used both from the bash shell (provided) or from the -standard Windows command shell. - -@section Is it free software? - -Yes. Parts are GNU software (gcc, gas, ld, etc...), parts are covered -by the standard X11 license, some of it is public domain, some of -it was written by Cygnus and placed under the GPL. None of it is -shareware. You don't have to pay anyone to use it but you should be -sure to read the copyright section of the FAQ more more information on -how the GNU General Public License may affect your use of these tools. - -In particular, if you intend to port a proprietary (non-GPL'd) -application using Cygwin, you will need the proprietary-use license -for the Cygwin library. This is available for purchase; please -contact sales@@cygnus.com for more information. -All other questions should be sent to the project -mailing list cygwin@@sources.redhat.com. - -Note that when we say "free" we mean freedom, not price. The goal of -such freedom is that the people who use a given piece of software -should be able to change it to fit their needs, learn from it, share -it with their friends, etc. The Cygwin license allows you those -freedoms, so it is free software. - -The Cygwin 1.0 product is a "commercial" distribution of cygwin. As -such, it includes such non-software things as printed manuals, support, -and aggregation of useful utilities. There is nothing (software-wise) -in there that you can't already get off the net already, if you take the -time to find and download everything (and usually, build it yourself), -although the @emph{versions} available for download may be different -than those distributed with the commercial product. We test it all to -make sure it works together, and package it in a convenient form. We -consider such testing and packaging to be a valuable service and thus -charge a fee for it. Plus, it provides income for the cygwin project so -we can continue working on it. For further details about the commercial -product, see @file{http://www.cygnus.com/cygwin/}. - -@section A brief history of the project - -@strong{(Please note: This section has not yet been updated for the latest -net release.)} - -The first thing done was to enhance the development tools (gcc, gdb, -gas, et al) so that they could generate/interpret Win32 native object -files. - -The next task was to port the tools to Win NT/95. We could have done -this by rewriting large portions of the source to work within the -context of the Win32 API. But this would have meant spending a huge -amount of time on each and every tool. Instead, we took a substantially -different approach by writing a shared library (cygwin.dll) that adds -the necessary unix-like functionality missing from the Win32 API (fork, -spawn, signals, select, sockets, etc.). We call this new interface the -Cygwin API. Once written, it was possible to build working Win32 -tools using unix-hosted cross-compilers, linking against this library. - -From this point, we pursued the goal of producing native tools capable of -rebuilding themselves under Windows 95 and NT (this is often -called self-hosting). Since neither OS ships with standard UNIX -user tools (fileutils, textutils, bash, etc...), we had to get the -GNU equivalents working with the Cygwin API. Most of these tools were -previously only built natively so we had to modify their configure -scripts to be compatible with cross-compilation. Other than the -configuration changes, very few source-level changes had to be made. -Running bash with the development tools and user tools in place, -Windows 95 and NT look like a flavor of UNIX from the perspective of the -GNU configure mechanism. Self hosting was achieved as of the beta 17.1 -release. - -After adding Windows 98 support to Cygwin in mid-1998, we added support -for the native Microsoft libraries in the compiler which allows -compilation of executables that do not use Cygwin. This is important to -those people who want to use the tools to develop Win32 applications -that do not need the UNIX emulation layer. |