Re: [PATCH 2/2] mingw: remove msysGit/MSYS1 support

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Jan 9, 2023, 07:48 UTC
Message-ID: <4a2ce224-85e4-5903-44bc-664aa5a59f91@gmx.de>
In-Reply-To: <xmqq4jttxt0u.fsf@gitster.g>

Hi,

On Sun, 18 Dec 2022, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 26 quoted lines

> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
>
> > "Harshil-Jani via GitGitGadget" <gitgitgadget@gmail.com> writes:
> >
> >> From: Harshil-Jani <harshiljani2002@gmail.com>
> >>
> >> The msysGit (i.e. Git for Windows 1.x' SDK) is no longer used and the
> >> last known user for MSys1 + MinGW has switched to MSys2.
> >
> > It is curious that we can speak with such a certainty of the lack of
> > users of such a popular project.  References?
>
> I see J6t mentioning about such a switch,
>
>   https://lore.kernel.org/git/c9aec5b6-0a78-a580-3658-5189bd2075a6@kdbg.org/
>
> but I do not know if it is sensible to claim that this was the last
> known user switching away.  Perhaps
>
>     Last time the code around here was modified, which eventually
>     led to 49d279f8 (windows: include the Python bits when building
>     Git for Windows, 2022-07-29), the change was carefully written
>     to keep things unchanged for Msys1, as at least one user
>     (Johannes Sixt) who did crucial work to support Git on Windows
>     and we did not want to break Msys1 (yet).  In the discussion J6t
>     confirmed that he no longer is on Msys1 (cf. [*1*]).

It would be good to avoid over-indexing on individual person's preferences. While it seems to be quite common in the Git project, it is obvious how this harms the Git project more than e.g. focusing on users' needs would.

A more productive line of thought would therefore be:

	MSys has long fallen behind MSYS2 in features like Unicode or
	x86_64 support or even security bug fixes, and is therefore no
	longer used by anyone in the Git developer community. The Git for
	Windows project itself started switching from MSys to MSYS2 early
	in 2015, i.e. about eight years ago. Let's drop supporting MSys as
	a development platform.

Ciao, Johannes

Show 17 quoted lines

>
> to replace the paragraph, with this at the end
>
>     [References]
>     *1* https://lore.kernel.org/git/c9aec5b6-0a78-a580-3658-5189bd2075a6@kdbg.org/)
>
> explain the change (be sure to explain ../THIS_IS_MSYSGIT bit, too,
> not just the $(uname_R) bit), and then throw in something like
>
>     There may be users other than J6t who needs a working Msys1, but
>     we can revert this patch if it becomes necessary (i.e. when they
>     complain).
>
> somewhere?
>
> Thanks.
>