Re: Where has the rwxr-xr-x gone from dired?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2016 16:46:19 -0600
> From: Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com>
> 
> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > John Mastro wrote:
> > > Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > > > Why from Cygwin?  Native Windows ports of ls.exe do exist.
> > > 
> > > My perception when I first started using this setup was that Cygwin was
> > > the easiest way to get a fairly complete Unix-like command line
> > > environment.
> > 
> > Easiest doesn't always mean the best.
> 
> My perception is that Cygwin has an active developer base that often
> participates on the GNU mailing lists and therefore Cygwin is more
> visible to the GNU community than other ports such as MinGW.  I don't
> recall ever having seen a MinGW developer chatting about MinGW on the
> mailing lists I frequent.  For example.

I guess we are reading very disjoint sets of lists, then ;-)

> As far as I can tell Cygwin tries really hard to create a Unix like
> environment on Microsoft Windows.  If that requires making some things
> that a MS user might expect to be MS-like to be more Unix-like then
> that is what they do.  Whereas MinGW tries really hard to port GNU
> utilities to Microsoft so that within the MS operating system the GNU
> utilities are available.  As much as possible all MS-like features are
> preserved.
> 
> As such these two projects have a different design vision.  As far as
> I can tell this is the difference.  If a person is coming from a Unix
> background and likes it then Cygwin provides a more Unix like
> environment.  If a person is coming from a Microsoft background and
> likes it then MinGW provides a more Microsoft like environment.
> 
> True?  False?  I don't know.

Both true and false.  The issue here is not whether to prefer Cygwin
over MinGW.  The issue is whether it is a good idea to have a MinGW
build of Emacs use Cygwin ls to produce directory listings on which
the MinGW built Emacs will have to operate.  IOW, the issue is mixing
Cygwin and MinGW programs in the same workflow, when it is known that
the way each one represents Posix access bits is radically different.