Re: Proposal to add and maintain the w3m package

[Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha at cs dot nyu dot edu>]

On Sat, 26 Feb 2005, Bob Heckel wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Based on suggestions from http://cygwin.com/setup.html, I'm
> announcing my willingness to be the package maintainer for the w3m
> browser (http://sourceforge.net/projects/w3m).

Good for you.  It might be a good idea to also say how w3m compares to
links and lynx (two other text-based web browsers).

> Before I proceed any further, I wanted to make sure the license for
> the GC library won't cause any problems.
> Overview -- http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/
> License -- http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/license.txt

According to <http://www.rocklinux.net/packages/boehm-gc.html>, the Boehm
collector is GPL'd, and thus should be no problem.

> Here are preliminary setup.hint's
>
> @ w3m
  ^^^^^
This line is not needed in the final setup.hint (though it helps to
distinguish between the two packages here).

> sdesc: "A text based Web browser and pager"
> ldesc: "w3m is a text-based World Wide Web browser with IPv6
> support. It features excellent support for tables and frames. It can
> be used as a standalone file pager, too."

  vvvvvvvvvvvvv
> curr: version
> prev: version
> test: version
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The above 3 lines aren't needed, unless the version is non-numeric.

> category: "Text Web"
> requires: gc ncurses openssl cygwin
>
> @ gc
  ^^^^
See above about the redundancy of this line.  Also, I'd name this package
"bdw-gc", or "boehm-gc".  Or, at least, as Debian calls it: "libgc".

> sdesc: "A garbage collecting replacement for C malloc or C++ new"

I would make this "The Boehm-Demers-Weiser conservative garbage collector
for C/C++" instead.

> ldesc: "The Boehm-Demers-Weiser conservative garbage collector can
> be used as a garbage collecting replacement for C malloc or C++ new.
> It allows you to allocate memory basically as you normally would,
> without explicitly deallocating memory that is no longer useful. The
> collector automatically recycles memory when it determines that it
> can no longer be otherwise accessed."

  vvvvvvvvvvvvv
> curr: version
> prev: version
> test: version
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Again, not needed.

> category: "Libs"
> requires: cygwin

BTW, Debian having a version of the GC library automatically makes it
eligible for inclusion into Cygwin.

HTH,
	Igor
-- 
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