2 <qandaentry id="faq.what">
3 <question><para>What is it?</para></question>
6 <para>The Cygwin tools are ports of the popular GNU development tools for
7 Microsoft Windows. They run thanks to the Cygwin library which
8 provides the POSIX system calls and environment these programs expect.
10 <para>With these tools installed, it is possible to write Windows console
11 or GUI applications that make use of significant parts of the POSIX API.
12 As a result, it is possible to easily port many Unix programs without the need
13 for extensive changes to the source code. This includes configuring
14 and building most of the available GNU software (including the packages
15 included with the Cygwin development tools themselves) as well as lots
16 of BSD tools and packages (including OpenSSH). Even if
17 the development tools are of little to no use to you, you may have
18 interest in the many standard POSIX utilities provided with the package.
19 They can be used from one of the provided Unix shells like bash, tcsh or zsh,
20 as well as from the standard Windows command shell if you have to for some
23 </answer></qandaentry>
25 <qandaentry id="faq.what.supported">
26 <question><para>What versions of Windows are supported?</para></question>
29 <para>Cygwin can be expected to run on all modern 32 bit versions of
30 Windows, except Windows CE and Windows 95/98/Me. This includes, as of the
31 time of writing this, Windows NT4, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server
32 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, as well as the
33 WOW64 32 bit environment on released 64 bit versions of Windows
34 (XP/2003/Vista/2008/7/2008 R2).
35 As far as we know no one is working on a native 64 bit version of Cygwin.
36 Since Cygwin is a community-supported free software project, patches to
37 provide support for other versions would be thoughtfully considered.
38 Paid support contracts or enhancements are available through Red Hat. For
39 information about getting a Red Hat support contract, see
40 <ulink url="http://cygwin.com/license.html" />.
42 <para>Keep in mind that Cygwin can only do as much as the underlying OS
43 supports. Because of this, Cygwin will behave differently, and
44 exhibit different limitations, on the various versions of Windows.
46 </answer></qandaentry>
48 <qandaentry id="faq.what.where">
49 <question><para>Where can I get it?</para></question>
52 <para>The home page for the Cygwin project is <ulink url="http://cygwin.com/">http://cygwin.com/</ulink>.
53 There you should find everything you need for Cygwin, including links
54 for download and setup, a current list of mirror sites, a User's
55 Guide, an API Reference, mailing lists and archives, and additional
58 <para>You can find documentation for the individual GNU tools typically
59 as man pages or info pages as part of the Cygwin net distribution.
60 Additionally you can get the latest docs at
61 <ulink url="http://www.gnu.org/manual/" />. (You should read GNU manuals from a
62 local mirror. Check <ulink url="http://www.gnu.org/server/list-mirrors.html" />
65 </answer></qandaentry>
67 <qandaentry id="faq.what.free">
68 <question><para>Is it free software?</para></question>
71 <para>Yes. Parts are GNU software (gcc, gas, ld, etc...), parts are covered
72 by the standard X11 license, some of it is public domain, some of
73 it was written by Red Hat (or the former Cygnus Solutions) and placed under
74 the GPL. None of it is shareware. You don't have to pay anyone to use it
75 but you should be sure to read the copyright section of the FAQ for more
76 information on how the GNU General Public License may affect your use of
79 <para>In particular, if you intend to port a proprietary (non-GPL'd)
80 application using Cygwin, you will need the proprietary-use license
81 for the Cygwin library. This is available for purchase from Red Hat;
82 please visit <ulink url="http://cygwin.com/license.html" /> for more
83 information. All other questions should be sent to the public project
84 mailing list cygwin@cygwin.com.
86 <para>Note that when we say "free" we mean freedom, not price. The goal of
87 such freedom is that the people who use a given piece of software
88 should be able to change it to fit their needs, learn from it, share
89 it with their friends, etc. The Cygwin license allows you those
90 freedoms, so it is free software.
92 </answer></qandaentry>
94 <qandaentry id="faq.what.version">
95 <question><para>What version of Cygwin <emphasis>is</emphasis> this, anyway?</para></question>
98 <para>To find the version of the Cygwin DLL installed, you can use
99 <filename>uname</filename> as on Linux or <filename>cygcheck</filename>. Refer to each command's
100 <literal>--help</literal> output and the <ulink url='http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/'>Cygwin User's Guide</ulink> for more information.
102 <para>If you are looking for the version number for the whole Cygwin
103 release, there is none. Each package in the Cygwin release has its own
104 version. The packages in Cygwin are continually improving, thanks to
105 the efforts of net volunteers who maintain the Cygwin binary ports.
106 Each package has its own version numbers and its own release process.
108 <para>So, how do you get the most up-to-date version of Cygwin? Easy. Just
109 download the Cygwin Setup program from
110 <ulink url='http://cygwin.com/setup.exe'>http://cygwin.com/setup.exe</ulink>. This program will handle the task
111 of updating the packages on your system to the latest version. For
112 more information about using Cygwin's <filename>setup.exe</filename>, see
113 <ulink url='http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/setup-net.html'>Setting Up Cygwin</ulink>
114 in the Cygwin User's Guide.
115 </para></answer></qandaentry>
117 <qandaentry id="faq.what.who">
118 <question><para>Who's behind the project?</para></question>
121 <para><emphasis role='bold'>(Please note that if you have cygwin-specific
122 questions, all of these people will appreciate it if you use the cygwin
123 mailing lists rather than sending personal email.)</emphasis>
126 Christopher Faylor (cgf) is one of the project leads. Chris works for
127 Netapp but all of his Cygwin activities occur on his own time. He is
128 most notably responsible for the support of signal handling and
129 fork/exec in Cygwin. He also administer's the site which hosts the
130 cygwin web site and release.
133 Corinna Vinschen (corinna) is the other project lead. Corinna is a
134 senior Red Hat engineer. Corinna is responsible for such important
135 subsystems as security and networking and has recently added support to
136 Cygwin for wide characters, increased path length, IPv6, advisory
137 file locking and more.
140 Yaakov Selkowitz is the Cygwin/X coordinator. Jon Turney serves on the
141 Cygwin/X team as a developer.
144 The Cygwin setup project is currently maintained by a group of people, most notably, Brian Dessent (brian) and Dave Korn (dave.korn).
146 <para>Please note that all of us working on Cygwin try to
147 be as responsive as possible and deal with patches and questions as we
148 get them, but realistically we don't have time to answer all of the
149 email that is sent to the main mailing list. Making Net releases of the
150 Win32 tools and helping people on the Net out is not our primary job
151 function, so some email will have to go unanswered.
153 <para>Many thanks to everyone using the tools for their many contributions in
154 the form of advice, bug reports, and code fixes. Keep them coming!
155 </para></answer></qandaentry>