RE: [Gnu-arch-users] Arch On Cygwin(Win32)

[Parker, Ron]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Kinson [mailto:address@hidden

> Having looked at the POSIX spec though, I'm not sure Cygwin should be 
> changed at all.  The spec states (see 
> http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/basedefs/limits.h.html) 
> that PATH_MAX should have a Minimum Acceptable Value of 
> _POSIX_PATH_MAX. 
>   _POSIX_PATH_MAX is defined by POSIX to be 256.

<snip>

I had contemplated bringing up this very point, but then I realized that
there is very little software that conforms to the POSIX
least-common-denominator.  If you doubt this, go to the source for the Linux
kernel and run 'find -type f|xargs pathchk -p'.  You will find that many
files exceed the _POSIX_NAME_MAX, which is only 14, others contain
non-portable characters, e.g. '+'.  Even conventional backup files like
cygwin.h~ contain the non-portable character '~'.  This also applies to ',',
'+' and some of the other filename characters used by tla.

When I realized how easy it would be to shoot down the POSIX LCD conformance
argument I decided not to raise it.  This does not mean that I personally
think it would be a bad idea for tla to work within the _POSIX_PATH_MAX
limit, but I know the file naming conventions have been hashed over several
times on this list, and I do not expect to change anyone's mind, for or
against, at this point.