[Xastir] Cygwin problems

[Jason Winningham]

On Nov 7, 2006, at 8:47 PM, David Flood wrote:

> Unfortunately, due to their licensing terms, you can't just  
> distribute the glue parts of Cygwin.  So it is impossible to make  
> an EXE file and related DLL's and have them just work.

I wasn't really thinking of eliminating the cygwin install, more  
install the base cygwin/X11 bundle as usual, then have a simple  
executable install of xastir.

> As an alternative to Cygwin, I've been playing with real systems  
> under the VMWare player but have yet to find a distribution of  
> Linux or BSD that is "lite" enough to have a small footprint but  
> will still compile Xastir and related sub-programs.

Actually, all you need for a VM are the binaries and basic config  
files.  The development can be done elsewhere.  One should be able to  
put together a reasonable VM for VMWare Player that doesn't have a  
complete development environment.  This also assumes that VMWare  
doesn't care if someone distributes VMPlayer virtual machines.

Assuming that VMWare continues to offer this product for free (big  
assumption!) this may be better than running under cygwin.  I've been  
playing with cygwin a bit lately and it seems a bit sluggish.  A  
VMWare VM may actually improve performance.

The gotcha with using a VM is sharing the hardware with the host OS,  
specifically COM ports, so that xastir can talk to TNCs and GPSs.

-Jason
kg4wsv