Re: Tools under Windows

[Keith MARSHALL]

Howard Chu wrote, quoting me:
[This originated on the address@hidden mailing list]
>> Would there be any advantage to you, if I were to add a user
>> customisation hook into the distributed msys.bat, so you wouldn't
>> need to hack your own customisations in, any time you upgrade?
>> (Say, have it call msysite.bat, if it exists in the msys startup
>> directory, just before invoking either rxvt.exe or sh.exe)?
>
> That would make sense. I've often wondered if there already was such
> a hook that I just hadn't seen.

There isn't, at present, AFAIK.  Does seem like a good idea though.
Of course, a more appropriate forum for continuing this discussion
would be the address@hidden mailing list.

> The other tweak that always goes in here is to change the default
> rxvt colors, even though the comments say not to edit them there.
> (sigh..)

The rxvt colours are always going to be a subjective choice, which
will vary from one user to the next.  The current defaults were set
according to Earnie Boyd's preference, and clearly will not suit
everyone.  The advice to not change them is more related to the
potential for clobbering the customisation during an upgrade,
rather than to any disasterous side effect which might ensue.  Of
course, a user customisation hook, calling a user supplied script,
would also side step this issue.

BTW, the MSYS rxvt has some I/O issues, which in some cases can
actually break a package build.  For example, `groff' cannot be
successfully built by a make process invoked from MSYS rxvt -- the
build locks up part way through -- yet it completes OOTB with MSYS
sh.exe started with rxvt disabled.  Since I am a groff developer,
in addition to being a MinGW project administrator, I have long
ago discarded the MSYS rxvt, in favour of the native Windows
console invocation of MSYS -- the problem has been identified as
an rxvt flaw, but extensive efforts to find a solution have so
far been fruitless. :-(

Regards,
Keith.