newlib-cygwin/winsup/doc/intro.xml

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<reference id="intro" xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude">
  <referenceinfo>
    <xi:include href="legal.xml"/>
  </referenceinfo>
  <title>Cygwin</title>
  <refentry id="intro1">
    <refmeta>
      <refentrytitle>intro</refentrytitle>
      <manvolnum>1</manvolnum>
      <refmiscinfo class="manual">Cygwin</refmiscinfo>
    </refmeta>
    <refnamediv>
      <refname>intro</refname>
      <refpurpose>Introduction to the Cygwin Environment</refpurpose>
    </refnamediv>
    <refsect1>
      <title>DESCRIPTION</title>
      <para><emphasis>Cygwin</emphasis> is a Linux-like environment for
      Windows. It consists of two parts:</para>
      <para>A DLL (<filename>cygwin1.dll</filename>) which acts as a POSIX API
      emulation layer providing substantial POSIX API functionality, modelled
      after the GNU/Linux operating system. The
      <citerefentry><refentrytitle>intro</refentrytitle><manvolnum>3</manvolnum></citerefentry>
      man page gives an introduction to this API.</para>
      <para>A collection of tools which provide Linux look and feel.  This man
      page describes the user environment.</para>
    </refsect1>
    <refsect1>
      <title>AVAILABILITY</title>
      <para><emphasis>Cygwin</emphasis> is developed by volunteers collaborating
      over the Internet. It is distributed through the website <ulink
      url="http://cygwin.com"/>, where you can find extensive documentation,
      including FAQ, User's Guide, and API Reference. The
      <emphasis>Cygwin</emphasis> website should be considered the authoritative
      source of information. The source code, released under the <emphasis>GNU
      General Public License, Version 3 (GPLv3+)</emphasis> and
      <emphasis>Lesser GNU General Public License, Version 3 (LGPLv3+)</emphasis>,
      is also available from the website or one of the mirrors.</para>
    </refsect1>
    <refsect1>
      <title>COMPATIBILITY</title>
      <para><emphasis>Cygwin</emphasis> uses the GNU versions of many of the
      standard UNIX command-line utilities (<command>sed</command>,
      <command>awk</command>, etc.), so the user environment is more similar to
      a Linux system than, for example, Sun Solaris.</para>
      <para>The default login shell and <command>/bin/sh</command> for
      <emphasis>Cygwin</emphasis> is <command>bash</command>, the GNU
      "Bourne-Again Shell", but other shells such as <command>tcsh</command>
      (an improved <command>csh</command>) are also available and can be
      installed using <emphasis>Cygwin</emphasis>'s setup.</para>
    </refsect1>
    <refsect1>
      <title>NOTES</title>
      <para>To port applications you will need to install the development tools,
      which you can do by selecting <package>gcc</package> in
      <emphasis>setup.exe</emphasis> (dependencies are automatically handled).
      If you need a specific program or library, you can search for a
      <emphasis>Cygwin</emphasis> package containing it at:</para>
      <para>
	<ulink url="http://cygwin.com/packages/"/>
      </para>
      <para>If you are a UNIX veteran who plans to use
      <emphasis>Cygwin</emphasis> extensively, you will probably find it worth
      your while to learn to use <emphasis>Cygwin</emphasis>-specific tools that
      provide a UNIX-like interface to common operations. For example,
      <command>cygpath</command> converts between UNIX and Win32-style
      pathnames. The full documentation for these utilities is at:</para>
      <para>
	<ulink url="http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using-utils.html"/>
      </para>
      <para>The optional <package>cygutils</package> and
      <package>cygutils-extra</package> packages also contain utilities that
      help with common problems.</para>
    </refsect1>
    <refsect1>
      <title>DOCUMENTATION</title>
      <para>In addition to man pages and texinfo documentation, many
      <emphasis>Cygwin</emphasis> packages provide system-independent
      documentation in the <filename>/usr/share/doc/</filename> directory and
      <emphasis>Cygwin</emphasis>-specific documentation in
      <filename>/usr/share/doc/Cygwin/</filename></para>
      <para>For example, if you have both <command>less</command> and
      <command>cron</command> installed, the command <command>less
      /usr/share/doc/Cygwin/cron.README</command> would display the instructions
      to set up <command>cron</command> on your system.</para>
    </refsect1>
    <refsect1>
      <title>REPORTING BUGS</title>
      <para>If you find a bug in <emphasis>Cygwin</emphasis>, please read</para>
      <para>
	<ulink url="http://cygwin.com/bugs.html"/>
      </para>
      <para>and follow the instructions for reporting found there.  If you are
      able to track down the source of the bug and can provide a fix, there are
      instructions for contributing patches at:</para>
      <para>
	<ulink url="http://cygwin.com/contrib.html"/>
      </para>
    </refsect1>
    <refsect1>
      <title>SEE ALSO</title>
      <para>
	<citerefentry>
	  <refentrytitle>intro</refentrytitle>
	  <manvolnum>3</manvolnum>
	</citerefentry>
      </para>
    </refsect1>
  </refentry>

  <refentry id="intro3">
    <refmeta>
      <refentrytitle>intro</refentrytitle>
      <manvolnum>3</manvolnum>
      <refmiscinfo class="manual">Cygwin</refmiscinfo>
    </refmeta>
    <refnamediv>
      <refname>intro</refname>
      <refpurpose>Introduction to the Cygwin API</refpurpose>
    </refnamediv>
    <refsect1>
      <title>DESCRIPTION</title>
      <para><emphasis>Cygwin</emphasis> is a Linux-like environment for
      Windows. It consists of two parts:</para>
      <para>A DLL (<filename>cygwin1.dll</filename>) which acts as a POSIX API
      emulation layer providing substantial POSIX API functionality, modelled
      after the GNU/Linux operating system. This page describes the API provided
      by the DLL.
      </para>
      <para>A collection of tools which provide Linux look and feel.  This
      environment is described in the
      <citerefentry><refentrytitle>intro</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>
      man page.</para>
    </refsect1>
    <refsect1>
      <title>AVAILABILITY</title>
      <para><emphasis>Cygwin</emphasis> is developed by volunteers collaborating
      over the Internet. It is distributed through the website <ulink
      url="http://cygwin.com"/>. The website has extensive documentation,
      including FAQ, User's Guide, and API Reference. It should be considered
      the authoritative source of information. The source code, released under
      the <emphasis>GNU General Public License, Version 3 (GPLv3+)</emphasis> and
      <emphasis>Lesser GNU General Public License, Version 3 (LGPLv3+)</emphasis>,
      is also available from the website or one of the mirrors.</para>
    </refsect1>
    <refsect1>
      <title>COMPATIBILITY</title>
      <para><emphasis>Cygwin</emphasis> policy is to attempt to adhere to
      <emphasis>POSIX.1-2008/SUSv4</emphasis> (Portable Operating System
      Interface for UNIX / The Single UNIX Specification, Version 4) where
      possible.</para>
      <para><emphasis>SUSv4</emphasis> is available online at:</para>
      <para>
	<ulink url="http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/"/>
      </para>
      <para>For compatibility information about specific functions, see the API
      Reference at:</para>
      <para>
	<ulink url="http://cygwin.com/cygwin-api/cygwin-api.html"/>
      </para>
      <para>Where these standards are ambiguous, Cygwin tries to mimic
      <emphasis>Linux</emphasis>.  However, <emphasis>Cygwin</emphasis> uses
      <emphasis>newlib</emphasis> instead of <emphasis>glibc</emphasis> as its C
      Library, available at:</para>
      <para>
	<ulink url="https://sourceware.org/newlib/"/>
      </para>
      <para>Keep in mind that there are many underlying differences between UNIX
      and Win32 making complete compatibility an ongoing challenge.</para>
    </refsect1>
    <refsect1>
      <title>REPORTING BUGS</title>
      <para>If you find a bug in <emphasis>Cygwin</emphasis>, please read</para>
      <para>
	<ulink url="http://cygwin.com/bugs.html"/>
      </para>
      <para>and follow the instructions for reporting found there.  If you are
      able to track down the source of the bug and can provide a fix, there are
      instructions for contributing patches at:</para>
      <para>
	<ulink url="http://cygwin.com/contrib.html"/>
      </para>
    </refsect1>
    <refsect1>
      <title>SEE ALSO</title>
      <para>
	<citerefentry>
	  <refentrytitle>intro</refentrytitle>
	  <manvolnum>1</manvolnum>
	</citerefentry>
      </para>
    </refsect1>
  </refentry>

</reference>