Is there a mailing list for the project?

Yes. There are several. They are listed below.

However, please check out the FAQ, the documentation, and the problem reporting guidelines before sending email to a mailing list.

I have a question! Should I just send it to one (or all) of the mailing lists below?

That depends. Have you adequately researched your question already? Cygwin is not a new project. It has been around for many years. That means that almost any question that you are burning to ask has probably already been asked. Almost every observation that you can make has probably been made. Almost every suggestion for improvement that you can think of has probably been suggested.

So, rather than send YA "same old" observation to one of the mailing lists below, and possibly be flamed as a result, you owe it to yourself to do some background research before posting.

Places to check for information would be the Cygwin FAQ, the Cygwin documentation, the web, and the mailing list archives (click on a mailing list name below to search the archive). Using one of these methods, it's likely that you'll be able to find the answers that you seek without sending email to thousands of people and you'll have the satisfaction of having gained valuable research skills.

This may seem like we're discouraging questions. Well, you are right. We are discouraging repeat questions. The Cygwin mailing list is a high volume list. Every question you send there will potentially be read by thousands of people. Many people will sigh and shake their heads when they see the same old question asked for the hundredth time. Is this how you want to introduce yourself to the Cygwin community? We think not.

Now that we've discouraged you, let us say that despite the fact that there is an incredible number of messages going to the Cygwin mailing lists, there are still a lot of friendly folk who will probably try to answer your "newbie" (shudder) questions. However, if you are going to ask a question, you owe it to yourself and your new acquaintances to ask an intelligent question. No one is "on staff" waiting for your email so no one needs to respond to clueless, vague, content-free, or repetitive queries or observations. This means that if you want to receive help you need to present yourself in such a fashion that people will want to help you. So, think thrice, post once -- and when you post make sure that you have also looked at the problem reporting guidelines so that you will be sure to provide all of the information needed to debug your problem.

Finally, make sure when you send a message to a Cygwin list that it actually has something to do with Cygwin. What do we mean by that? Well, if you can't install the Cygwin C compiler, then that has something to do with Cygwin. If you don't know C very well and need some pointers on writing a program, that really has nothing to do with Cygwin. If you are trying to run the Cygwin version of bash (the standard UNIX shell) and it hangs, then that's probably a Cygwin problem. If you can't figure out how to set up a command alias in bash, that's not a Cygwin question. These Cygwin questions are considered "on topic". The non-Cygwin questions are considered "off topic".

Why do we make this distinction? For two reasons: 1) as mentioned, the email traffic is very high so, by keeping things "on topic" we can cut down on some list traffic and 2) there are usually much better places on the Internet where you can get definitive answers for your off-topic-for-Cygwin question. It doesn't make sense to ask non-experts to teach you about C or bash.

Unfortunately, we can't tell you exactly where to go with your non-Cygwin questions. Google is a wonderful resource for finding things on the web, though. It's likely that a few well-chosen search terms will uncover scads of information.

'Nuff said.

Notes