Re: [crazy bug] please help me

[Steffen Dettmer]

In my team here we just have discussions whether on cygwin
textmode or binmode shall be used and when. Both have issues I
think.

Thank you for all replies and information for my partly off-topic questions.

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 4:18 AM, Eric Blake <address@hidden> wrote:
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> According to Steffen Dettmer on 11/23/2009 2:11 PM:
>> On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 11:58 PM, Eric Blake <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> It looks like a carriage return may be interfering with the resulting
>>> message.  Could this be a case of using text mode line endings, instead of
>>> binary mode?  On cygwin, autoconf is only supported on binary mounts.
>>
>> Ohh really? Is this a new requirement?
>
> No, more like an old issue of no one ever caring enough about text mode to
> bother submitting a patch to make it work.  I'll gladly apply such a
> patch, but it's not my itch, so I won't be writing it.

mmm... I'm not sure if I understood correctly what exactly
requires binmode.  Probably just to /build/ autoconf itself
requires binmode but packages /using/ autoconf (automake, ...)
work well (?) on textmode, is this correct?
Or are there some features not working with textmode when using
autotools? I think this could almost be expected because those
LFs IMHO can be really painfull...

One feature with issues with LF translation is "make dist" (even
with export CYGWIN=binmode). This one I don't understand. It uses
a pipe and should be binmode anyway but the gzip is damaged
because of LF translations (unless there are none of course :)).
Probably more a question for cygwin mailinglist...

> > Here I use autoconf 2.61 on textmode mounts. Please correct
> > me if I'm wrong, but using binmode would make cygwin CVS
> > check out the files with unix line feeds, wouldn't it?
>
> Use of binmode mounts means that you don't have to worry about
> spurious carriage returns getting inserted in files by tools
> that speak text, only to confuse tools that only speak binary.
>  When it comes to cygwin, there are enough tools that are
> binary only (because that is what POSIX requires) that it is
> just flat out easier to use binmode mounts when running
> autoconf.  Textmode mounts, on the other hand, are painful to
> manage without a lot of care.

Yes, there are cases where tools do not use binmode for binary
files and thus fail on textmode mounts due to LF translation on
cygwin. I think with binmode mounts practically ALL (windows)
tools fail, but of course heavily depends on the used tools.

> > Files with unix line feeds are not expected by many windows
> > tools (vim/emacs work fine, but e.g. MS DevStudio 6 or even
> > notepad.exe are odd).
>
> But using cygwin implies that you want a Unix-y environment, in
> which case you would be using gcc or vi/emacs, not DevStudio or
> notepad.

I think using cygwin implies that (regardless what I want :-)) I
/have to/ use Windows - otherwise I simply use linux which is free
of such issues and runs configure much faster :-)
For example cygwin can be helpful if there are Windows-only tools
(proprietary compilers/toolchains).

> If you really care about windows tools, then it may be wiser to
> try mingw instead of cygwin.

Ohh, interesting, I would have guessed exactly the opposite!
I just made a quick test (just cvs checkout of a test system,
configure, make && make check). cygwin textmode works with DOS
LFs. My MSYS does not perform LFs translations. MSYS performs
command line argument translations (i.e. "/?" to
"C\:/msys/1.0/?", someone must always use "-?" etc), which IMHO
is even worse that LF translation.
Cygwin binmode also works but does not do LF translations.

So on a MSYS sandbox windows tools are not working well. But from
MSYS, the Win32 API is available so from this point of view it is
closer integrated...

What I found interesting is that the "configure" script had unix
LFs in all three cases. config.h has DOS LFs on cygwin textmode.

So I still think when using cygwin (because windows tools are
needed, otherwise do not use cygwin but linux or so) textmode
mounts in general should be recommended to make the windows tools
work.

Probably the sum of all disadvantages remains constant...

oki,

Steffen