Why Cygwin/X?

[Ralf Habacker]

Heute 03:59:14 schrieb Jared Sutton
>
> Why is KDE-Cygwin still dependant upon Cygwin/X?  It seems that since
> there's a native port of X.org to Win32
> (http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Xming), that could be used instead, so we
> can avoid all the stickiness that comes with Cygwin. Or is there more 
> to the story than just needing an X server (and since I'm just a
> freshman developer, there very well could be)?
>

This is very good news especial with the experience I got running KDE on 
colinux. (see http://kde-cygwin.sf.net/kde3/). Now the cygwin X/ part could 
be replaced by xmin, which is already described on the colinux web site. 

It  runs very stable and much faster than the kde on cygwin port and all kde 
application are there. Addtional Users can now start  to recompile and extend 
kde application under colinux without any build systems problems because the 
apt installer can deal all the dependency stuff. It will be a good successor 
for kde-cygwin until a native win32 port of kde4 will be ready.

Removing cygwin isn't very simple, because unix provides a posix application 
programming interface, which is emulated by cygwin. Replacing cygwin (and X) 
means to separate all unix and x depended code from platform independent 
parts. These happens recently by the kde 4 port. If this is ready, a native 
KDE4 windows port (there are already native running KDE applications like 
kexi using a partial port) will be done using the gpl'ed qt4 port of QT. 
Several KDE developer had announced such porting efforts for example for 
kontact, kdevelop and so one.

Regards 
Ralf