Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: tla1.2 on cygwin

[Robert Collins]

On Wed, 2004-03-10 at 20:35, Dustin Sallings wrote:
>       Yeah, the sky is falling.  My first interactive attempt working with 
> other people in the way arch was designed to be used has left me with a 
> completely broken archive and your response is that Microsoft and Apple 
> should change fundamental properties of their operating systems to 
> better accommodate the way you do things.

Apple likewise support case insensitive operation on their HFS+ file
system.

As to applications affected by this, tla is not alone consider this as a
case in point: 
http://cert.uni-stuttgart.de/archive/bugtraq/2001/06/msg00110.html
a security compromise in apache due to case insensitive opens
completing.

Now, what is the status of case insensitivity Out There?

Microsoft's recommended FS - NTFS, FULLY SUPPORTS case insensitive
filenames. There is simply a flag application programs turn on
(POSIX_SEMANTICS from memory) in the *File* and *Directory* calls to get
this. There is no reason the native port to windows cannot use this.
Cygwin supports this too. Why isn't it the default in the win32 API? My
guess is the heritage from DOS where the API was case insensitive. MS
have for the most part avoided watershed changes like this would be for
a long time.

A Search for 'case' in this page
http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1150.html - synposis HFS was
case insensitive and broken for i18n issues. HFS+ is case-insensitive
and has set fixed equivalences in its use of Unicode... HFSX is
optionally case sensitive. HFSX volumes are an extension to HFS+ and
supported from MacOS 10.3 and up.
http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1150.html#HFSX

In short: there is absolutely no requirement for the OS Vendors in
question to alter their support for case insensitive file systems - they
already do support it. Users have to choose to use that, due to
backwards compatibility in the defaults currently in use.

Rob
-- 
GPG key available at: <http://www.robertcollins.net/keys.txt>.

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