On Thu, 07 Aug 2008 10:54:44 -0400, Warp wrote:

>   I really can't understand why precisely cygwin is used to port unix
> programs to Windows. Cygwin binaries rely on a bunch of dlls nobody has.

I've never had a problem running cygwin as long as you run the cygwin 
installer from cygwin.org.  That includes everything you need and even 
resolves the dependencies so you can select the tar & gzip executables 
only and it'll install what it needs.

What I don't understand is why people distribute an executable for cygwin 
without mentioning "you need cygwin to run this" and a link to the site.

Jim

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On Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:11:09 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> Nobody uses computers that were designed 40 years ago.

That's not entirely true...

http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue132/92_Space_shuttle_techno.php

I had looked for a more current example, but I did recall that the 
shuttle flight computers were based on core memory technologies that were 
decades old.

Your statement above is kinda like saying "nobody uses hydraulic systems 
in avionics any more - it's all fly-by-wire now", which is also untrue.

Jim

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Tar has been unchanged for a hell of a long time.

  Yeah. The latest version of GNU tar is from April 2008.

> That makes it either antiquated or 
> increadibly well-designed, depending on how you look at it.

  If it was not good enough, it would have surely been enhanced or changed
to something else.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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"Doctor John" <joh### [at] homecom> wrote in message
news:489b1cdf$1@news.povray.org...

> How about incredibly well designed and tested like most *nix utilities

I wouldn't say that. Like most *nix utils, tar has its idiosyncracies. It's
just that changes would break too many things.

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somebody wrote:
> I wouldn't say that. Like most *nix utils, tar has its idiosyncracies. 

Actually, it sucks pretty badly for manipulating actual tape archives, 
when you get right down to it.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
  Ever notice how people in a zombie movie never already know how to
  kill zombies? Ask 100 random people in America how to kill someone
  who has reanimated from the dead in a secret viral weapons lab,
  and how many do you think already know you need a head-shot?

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Warp wrote:
>> That makes it either antiquated or 
>> increadibly well-designed, depending on how you look at it.
> 
>   If it was not good enough, it would have surely been enhanced or changed
> to something else.

"Good enough" isn't "incredibly well-designed". ;-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
  Ever notice how people in a zombie movie never already know how to
  kill zombies? Ask 100 random people in America how to kill someone
  who has reanimated from the dead in a secret viral weapons lab,
  and how many do you think already know you need a head-shot?

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Invisible wrote:
> Personally, I thought Tar was completely obsolete now?

HUH? 99.999% of programming projects give their code in .tar.gz or .tar.bz2
archives.

> On the other hand, other than the equally naff Zip format, I'm not aware
> of anything else that is really widely supported. (Arguably the 7zip
> format is nicer - but who supports that? Er, yeah, 7zip. And nobody
> else.) Does anybody here know different?

7zip is better, but the only complete implementation is tied to Windows
features... (p7zip doesn't support PPMd compression, for example, only
LZMA).

> Then another fanboy yelled at me that it's "easy" to find a Win32 port
> of Tar. Sure, it's so "easy" in fact that I wasted an entire afternoon
> trying to do this and ultimately failed.

http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/gtar.htm

> Specifically, I found a TAR.EXE, but it instantly crashes because it
> can't find "cygwin.dll". And, almost unbelievably, I can't find anywhere
> on the face of the Internet where I can download this file - including
> the Cygwin website!

cygwin.dll? That must be an ancient program. cygwin1.dll is what all cygwin
programs use now.

As for getting the dll... you download setup.exe, which is a package manager
on its own. The default options should come with tar already, otherwise
select it from the huge package list. You'll get a full bash shell in a
window :)

> So the guy yelled at me "well why don't you have Cygwin installed
> already?" Er, hello? Why should I have to set up an entire Unix
> emulation environment just to develop Haskell programs? Haskell is
> supposed to be portable, remember? Suffice it to say the guy didn't
> think I could be a "real developer" if I don't have Cygwin installed.

OK that gets immature from his part :)

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"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote
> somebody wrote:

> > I wouldn't say that. Like most *nix utils, tar has its idiosyncracies.

> Actually, it sucks pretty badly for manipulating actual tape archives,
> when you get right down to it.

The problem in academia/*nix world is a bit of idol worship and inertia. I
had to use TEX/LATEX again the other day. Great concept for its day (and
even for today) and it still works of course, but what a mess and PITA. It
needs a major rewrite to bring it into the 21st century. Being not buggy and
predictable (for those with an intimate knowledge of its inner workings, at
least) is not the same as being "incredibly well designed" - especially
after 5-10 years in the software business.

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somebody <x### [at] ycom> wrote:
> "Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote
> > somebody wrote:

> > > I wouldn't say that. Like most *nix utils, tar has its idiosyncracies.

> > Actually, it sucks pretty badly for manipulating actual tape archives,
> > when you get right down to it.

  The tar *program* maybe, but manipulating the tar *format* is just a
question of selecting the program you like. I'm sure there are many
advanced and GUI'ed programs which can handle tar (and other) formats
in multitude of ways.

> The problem in academia/*nix world is a bit of idol worship and inertia. I
> had to use TEX/LATEX again the other day. Great concept for its day (and
> even for today) and it still works of course, but what a mess and PITA. It
> needs a major rewrite to bring it into the 21st century. Being not buggy and
> predictable (for those with an intimate knowledge of its inner workings, at
> least) is not the same as being "incredibly well designed" - especially
> after 5-10 years in the software business.

  One advantage of LaTeX over most other text editing software is that its
input is ascii text. This makes it relatively easy to write programs which
generate LaTeX files and then let LaTeX handle the nice formatting.

  Of course not many appreciate this, not even many programmers who are
tasked to create a program which produces visually-pleasing documents.
One of the easiest way of doing this is, by far, make the program output
a proper LaTeX file, rather than trying to use some obscure library or,
heaven forbid, try to create the PDF/PS itself (which is really *not* worth
the programming trouble).

  Could the LaTeX input format be improved? Sure. However, it has worked
for a couple of decades, and usually the principle is "if it works, don't
fix it".

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Sun, 10 Aug 2008 14:48:22 -0600, somebody wrote:

> The problem in academia/*nix world is a bit of idol worship and inertia

s/academia\/\*nix/the Windows/

Statement is still true....Everyone has fanboys....

Jim

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