why would somebody want cygwin?

http://www.cygwin.com/

home page says:


Quote:

Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. It consists of two parts: * A DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as a Linux API emulation layer providing substantial Linux API functionality. * A collection of tools which provide Linux look and feel.

why would somebody want a Linux-like environment for Windows?

have you heard of e?

http://e-texteditor.com/index.html

i really like the style of their home page. v. clean.


Quote:

The next generation Text editor E is a new text editor for Windows, with powerful editing features and quite a few unique abilities. It makes manipulating text fast and easy, and lets you focus on your writing by automating all the manual work. You can extend it in any language, and by supporting TextMate bundles, it allows you to tap into a huge and active community

in e page i read but don't understand


Quote:

UNIX at your fingertips You can leverage the full power of a unix scripting environment, right from within e. Close integration with cygwin gives you access to the full range of UNIX shell tools and lets you extend e with your choice of languages like Ruby, Perl, Python and more. If you have any task that could benefit from automation, you can be sure that e is up to it.

cygwin is essentially Wine for windows.  Just like Wine allows you to run some windows programs (like Photoshop and Dremweaver, and Office) in Linux, cygwin allows you to run some Linux programs on a windows OS.  Since many Linux programs are open source, most of them can be simply recompiled and run under Windows natively, so cygwin is often unnecessary.

In regards to the bit about scripting - scripts are small programs.  In Linux, it is popular to write command shell scripts to automate tasks (like cleaning up files on the disk.)  This is very similar to the old batch jobs in Windows or a scheduled task.

Since I run Linux, I have never had a strong need to emulate it, so that's about the limit of my knowledge of cygwin.

MrMagoo wrote on Jul 11^th, 2008 at 12:03am:

cygwin is essentially Wine for windows

i see. thanks.


MrMagoo wrote on Jul 11^th, 2008 at 12:03am:

Since I run Linux, I have never had a strong need to emulate it

'strong'?  :)

why isnt smile displaying?

test  [smiley=smiley.gif]

oh, have to use smiles over to left.

wait, they don't work either.

the broken smile bug mystery.

On cygwin home page it says:


Quote:

Cygwin is not a way to run native linux apps on Windows.

So that would indicate cygwin is *not* like Wine .. no?

Rad wrote on Jul 12^th, 2008 at 9:41pm:

So that would indicate cygwin is *not* like Wine .. no?

Absolutely correct. Cygwin has nothing whatsoever to do with Linux.

Instead, Cygwin is a POSIX environment for Windows (Microsoft had an official POSIX environment too, available for NT from the initial release of 3.1, but it existed only to achieve the absolute minimum requirements for FIPS, because POSIX compliance was required for some federal purchasing).

POSIX is the umbrella name for the IEEE 1003 specifications; more formally, it's the IEEE Portable Open System Interface, a collection of standards that captured the "essence" of UNIX and which most operating system vendors signed up to support.

In the early 1980s an association of commercial UNIX and C users formed which called itself /usr/group, which existed to try and bring together some of the splintering of UNIX and C environments that was happening. There were several different C compilers, differences in the programming libraries, and differences in the tools provided by vendors. This lead to a specification in 1983 which addressed the things there was wide consensus on, and that was taken as the basis of two formal standards efforts that lead on from that rough beginning.

The first was the attempt to create a standard language definition for C, which was taken up under the American National Standards Institute's X3J11 committee; the second was undertaken by the IEEE and this lead to the publication of IEEE 1003.1-1990 which addressed the behaviour of the primary C interfaces to the core operating facility and subsequently 1003.2 for the shell and utilities, 1003.4 for real-time systems and many subsequent specifications.

Most important software for UNIX written during the late 80's and early 90's tracked the development of the specifications; that includes software like the GNU C Compiler - written by Richard M Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation - who devoted a lot of energy to POSIX (he was the one who coined the name, in fact) and via the GNU tools did a lot to promote the cause of UNIX code portability.

The cygwin environment was created by the other major pioneer Mike Tiemann (who had basically by himself added C++ language support as a set of patches to GCC 1.x, a remarkable achievement) as a way to make it easier to port POSIX programs, and in particular the GNU toolchain, to Windows including to other versions of Windows than the NT environment (since Microsoft's POSIX support was only for NT).

Nowadays there is no so much reason to run cygwin as there used to be - and basically none for end users - but it's handy sometimes for developers even now since it's a complete environment. It served as a huge springboard for getting lots of tools originally written for UNIX systems to get gradually ported to native Windows through the 1990s and onwards - it was often the first port of call for creating a Windows-runnable version of something, which was then what typically created the demand for the effort to develop fully native Windows versions of things.

You are correct.  I see I have misspoken.  It seems it is *like* an emulator but not as complete or fully integrated.  It appears to provide a Unix environment (the shell, pipes, and other tools) from within a Windows OS.  It also includes an API so that Windows programs can access some of those tools.

Again, my experience is limited since I am usually interested in going the other way (running Windows programs in a Linux OS.)

wrote on Jul 13^th, 2008 at 3:41am:

Nowadays there is no so much reason to run cygwin as there used to be - and basically none for end users - but it's handy sometimes for developers

Thanks Nigel. Very informative. (I read it twice.)

The e text editor mentioned above wants to install cygwin, as an option, which apparently adds functionality. So I was trying to figure out how it factored into the equation.

It's mainly done this way for that editor because POSIX environments with commands that pipe input and output are a good way to do advanced things with text. Most UNIX-based text editors of the last 30 years have always had some way of taking part of an edit buffer and sending it outside to be worked on by external filtering tools, since that's part of the core philosophy of UNIX.

What text editor do you happen to use, btw?

Whichever one is closest to hand, usually either a full IDE (Visual Studio, Netbeans, KDevelop, Xcode blah blah), or whatever the platform has for quick-and-dirty notepad/vim/TextEdit/whatever. I've been writing code for so long for so many languages on so many platforms that I've been forced to get used to them all to some degree.

Honestly, the thinking is the part that matters. Text editors don't make you smarter, so they don't matter that much.

Rad, I’m not sure I understand the problem you are seeking to solve, but you may wish to look at the free virtual machine (VM) appliances offered by VMware that run Linux, if that helps.

P.S.:  I haven’t had a chance yet to start “playing” with Linux, but when I do, I’ll be running it in a VM from within Windows.

No problem. Just trying to understand and learn more .. about technology.

I should note however, that the latest upgrade .. to YaBB v2.2.3 *did* fix the broken-smile bug. Small victories.


wrote on Jul 13^th, 2008 at 8:07pm:

Honestly, the thinking is the part that matters. Text editors don't make you smarter, so they don't matter that much.

There's a guy I see every morning at the coffee shop, sitting there, cranking out code. He builds games for Nintendo Wii, and he says the same thing, almost verbatim.

He gets up when he wants. Works when he wants. Where he wants. Quits when he wants. And then goes and DOES what he wants. (His name is Kurt.)

Rad wrote on Jul 18^th, 2008 at 1:48pm:

he says the same thing, almost verbatim

Not surprising :-)

Part of what leads people - especially those at the higher ends of the ability spectrum - into programming are a couple of things.

One is usually the standard positive dopamine-reinforcement loop from learning experiences (part of our evolutionary heritage, where to enhance survival, learning is one of the things we are able to find actively pleasurable and we get a dopamine kick from), and programming is a good source of those little hits of reward not just for the learning of the simple mathematical rules of programming itself, but in the endless world of emergent properties and applications of programs that can keep you busy for a lifetime.

The other is a thing which is a very common part of the experience of programming: flow state. It's common, particularly those who are outside of the flow-destroying aspects of most workplaces, for developers to spend a lot of time in flow state and it's quite something. Workplaces suck at this generally, and extreme stress makes it much harder to reach, so for instance it's something I can only rarely manage these days whereas as a youth I could spend literally 24 hours solid like that. But it's very rewarding when you can get there.

[ And of course, as you'll note from the above-linked article, flow state really is a big part of what the folks in gaming try to engage players to reach, albeit one that won't have some of the more profound qualities. Ask Kurt about that. ]

A less common, but still frequent pattern of experience is the way flow state works in conjunction with visual thinking (described well by the famous Temple Grandin), where one can literally see the entire solution to a problem in the mind's eye.

In flow state, you're able to transcribe that mental perception; when I'm there, I just have to "zoom on" on a particular element of the model of the system in my mind, and I have the feeling of seeing the code it's made up of, and I can let it just come out. Some particular text editor or other matters only if it's so clumsy (or unfamiliar) that it can get in the way of you reaching or sustaining that state.

Things like this are a part of why, as I mentioned in the other thread, high-ability people tend to not be as affected as others by economic factors in their selection of specialty in higher education. It's addictive behaviour at work!