Cygwin 1.7 Released 203
jensend writes "The 1.7 branch of Cygwin, the Unix-like environment for Windows, has reached stable status after about 3 1/2 years of effort. Among many other changes, this release drops support for Windows 9x. Since the NT API and NT-based versions of Windows are more capable and somewhat less of a mismatch with POSIX (for instance, they include a security model), this has allowed for code path simplifications, better performance (particularly noticeable with pipe I/O), better security, and better POSIX compatibility."
makes windows marginally bearable (Score:5, Insightful)
Even after all these years, Microsoft has nothing equivalent to the UNIX command line. The standard cmd.exe is too limited, and Powershell isn't a good interactive shell, it's more like typing at a Python or Ruby interpreter. Cygwin makes doing anything on Windows marginally tolerable and I install it on any Windows machine I happen to use.
Re:Does this do something SFU doesn't? (Score:3, Insightful)
The biggest--perhaps only--reason I install Cygwin on Windows is because so many cross-platform applications require it for compilation (Mozilla, I'm looking at you). Of course, whether they coud ue MinGW and/or the Windows "Services for Unix" layer to accomplish something similar is another story, but until they decide to change and support it, Cygwin it is.
And personally, having had to install Cygwin, I've never even paid attention to the POSIX layer for Windows, but it looks like it might be worth looking into. I think part of the reason some projects use Cygwin owes to their current or not-to-far-in-the-past support of Windows 9x/Me (the POSIX layer, of course, is only for the NT family) and probably no benefit (or perhaps even more problems, having to work out compatibility issues with yet another set of tools) from changing.
I wonder if Cygwin really has much of a future (Score:2, Insightful)
It used to be if I wanted to run some Linux code under Windows I'd have to have a Linux box nearby, boot into Linux, or deal with Cygwin. I've never really enjoyed using Cygwin it's a pain to use, maintain, work with, and code for. There are lots of subtle differences in how your code behaves when you go from Linux to Cygwin (for example, re-writing someone's entire program because they liked to use lots of mallocs and Cygwin mallocs are unbelievably slow).
At this point though you can either run VMware, get a full Linux distro, and have easier access to your local Windows files (via a local share) than Cygwin's fun mapping scheme (/cygdrive what now?). Or you can even run an EC2 instance. Cygwin was never painless enough to make it worth while to use, if I needed to do something in Linux I'd rather use a real Linux box.
I don't think most people really miss the command line utilities enough to want to go through the hassle of using Cygwin (I hate the install process btw)... but then again I don't like using Linux as my desktop. I'd rather just use Windows or OS X and ssh into my Linux clusters as needed.
Re:makes windows marginally bearable (Score:1, Insightful)
I just can't see any reason myself or an average Windows user would need a UNIX command line on their Windows computer.
Consider the task of converting a few thousand files from one format to another. The average Windows user will spend hours doing it by hand or spend a lot of money on a special purpose tool to do such conversions. If they're really smart, they may spend a lot of time and cobble something together in VisualBasic. That's the Windows way: slow, cumbersome, and expensive.
In fact, I think the whole point of Windows is to get away from the command line.
The whole and entire point of Windows is to make money for Microsoft, to tie you inextricably to their platform, and to make sure that your thinking becomes so warped that you can't possibly use anything else. I'd say they are succeeding.
Re:makes windows marginally bearable (Score:3, Insightful)
I just can't see any reason myself or an average Windows user would need a UNIX command line on their Windows computer. In fact, I think the whole point of Windows is to get away from the command line.
I don't see it that way. I don't see a point in getting away from the command line. Some things are most easily or quickly done or explained with the command line, just as other things are most easily or quickly done or explained using windows, icons, menus and a pointer. It's good to have good support for both in your system.
The way I see it, the point of Windows, from a customer's perspective, is to run Windows applications. That is the one thing Windows does better than any other operating system out there.
Re:makes windows marginally bearable (Score:3, Insightful)
If you think about it, it is almost unbelievable that Microsoft would release a new shell, then mak it not POSIX compliant. Almos defy OS for the last couple of decades has aimed for POSIX compliancy. Then when they build a shell, they ignore that and go on their own way. I wonder what would have happened if they just tried to conform.
A lot of sysadmins who are fluent with shell scripting, could have jumped in and have a huge advantage administering Windows machines. A lot of free utilities could easily be ported. And Windows admins could just pick up any of the gajillion resources on Shell scripting, or visit a local Unix user group to pick up tricks.
I know Powershell has lots of hooks that apps can hook into; that's basically the equivalent of Linux' D-Bus system.
Re:makes windows marginally bearable (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are a developer or sysadmin who deals with data, then you use the command line. You can take several hundred log files, run them through 1 liner piped commands (find, grep, xargs, awk, sed, perl, sort, uniq, wc, head, tail, etc), output a CSV file, and pop it into Excel in about 10-20 minutes. Try doing that with only Excel and you'll be there all day.
Re:makes windows marginally bearable (Score:4, Insightful)
While it requires the higher editions of Windows (XP Pro, Vista/7 Enterprise or Ultimate, any Server edition), you must have missed the presence of the POSIX subsystem in NT (it's been there since the first releases of the OS, incidentally). Called the Subsystem for UNIX Applications (SUA) on recent versions, or Services For UNIX (SFU) on XP and before, the POSIX subsystem is free on supported Windows and includes a decent operating environment called Interix.
Interix includes a few hundred libraries and utilities, mostly BSD derived or SVR5-derived (you can choose which lineage you want at install) but also including things like the GNU build toolchain (gcc 3 and 4, with support for at least C, C++, and Fortran; I haven't tried any others). Additionally, you can install a package manager and an expanded/updated collection of tools and software from http://suacommunity.com/sua.aspx [suacommunity.com]. Manpages are also included (both for bundled software and Interix packages).
Bash (along with other shells such as zsh) is available from suacommunity. Interix ships with csh and ksh. I use Interix bash as my standard Windows command line these days, including running Windows CLI utilities. I also run Python and Ruby interpreters from within Interix (suacommunity packages). You can even run graphical applications if you have an X server such as xming (the suacommunity bootstrapper will offer to install it).
If you have a version of Windows that supports the POSIX subsystem (businesses mostly will), I recommend it over Cygwin. For one thing, you get true *NIX behavior - executables are marked by permissions bits, not by extensions, the filesystem is case-sensitive (technically an install option for Interix, but one you definitely want), and you get UNIX-style permissions including working setUID and setGID (having a working sudo makes using the command line on a non-Administrator Windows session much more pleasant).
Re:Does this do something SFU doesn't? (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft, fucking up userland since 1992.