This question keys off IIRC Johnny's remarks earlier in the day about how much work it is to build a release.
This question is addressed to those build gurus on this list who have forgotten more about the build process than this poster will ever know and further have first hand knowledge|experience with cygwin-setup.
Because 4 of our servers are Windows boxen running IIS (to enable small business folks to build web sites with Front Page), considerable fondness for the cygwin build process has developed to the extent that Windows commands via CLI and GUI are hardly ever done.
At the end of the day, other than RPM package management, what are the substantial differences that would preclude a cygwin-setup-like build process from being used to build and maintain the release and would it be a lot faster and less labor intensive?
kind regards/ldv/vaden@texoma.net