Re: DJGPP

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Bruno Haible <address@hidden>
> Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2005 13:49:13 +0100
> Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden
> 
> [Removed DJ Delorie from the CC list since I have no reason to write him.]

He would be amused to hear that DJGPP is ``dead''.

> Removing support for obsolete systems is a must for maintainability,
> when the time has come.

You are entitled to remove support for any platform you like; what I
asked was not to decide for others when their projects become dead.

> > For starters, the ``horrible hacks'' of the 8+3 alias
> > names plague MinGW programs no less than they do DJGPP programs,
> > because they are inherent in the Windows filesystems.
> 
> Sorry to contradict you, but other than problems with directories named
> "CON" or similar, I've not seen problems with filenames in programs
> compiled with MSVCRT on Windows NT/XP systems.

The fact that you didn't see the problems doesn't mean they don't
exist.  It might mean that your experience is not extensive enough.

> > I can only assume that your own personal experience with using MinGW
> > for serious development is close to nil, because MinGW has yet to
> > arrive at the level of integration, coherency, and Posix compliance
> > that DJGPP gives its users since 1996.
> 
> If you want POSIX compliance, you need cygwin, not mingw.

Not true.  Since GNU tools come from a Posix environment, you cannot
have a coherent set of ported tools without some minimal Posix
compliance.  For 100% Posix compliance, one indeed needs to go to
Cygwin (and pay the overhead, and live with incompatibility with
native Windows programs), but _any_ good port of GNU software needs
some amount of Posix compliance for the tools to work together well.

> But also, I cannot call DJGPP a "platform of choice" on Windows either.

It is in many aspects still better than MinGW, although due to the
fact that Microsoft doesn't let DOS programs an easy access to
lucrative Windows features like networking, drag-and-drop, large file
support, memory-mapped files, etc., it leaves quite a lot to be
desired.

> Care to take a look at the GNU clisp build instructions for DJGPP and
> compare them to those for EMX?
> http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/clisp/clisp/dosdjgpp/Attic/INSTALL?rev=1.2&view=auto
> http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/clisp/clisp/dos/Attic/INSTALL?rev=1.3&view=auto

These DJGPP instructions refer to an ancient version 1.12 of DJGPP
(released in 1993!), and the problems it mentions were solved long ago
in DJGPP v2.x.  So the only thing I see here is an unsupported port,
that's all.

> That was 1999. Since then, Emacs has NT support integrated, and it's hard
> to buy a copy of Windows 95/98/ME.

A copy of Windows 98 is for sale at my local PC dealer nearby.  And
DJGPP runs well on Windows XP, so there's no need to go back to
Windows 9x if you don't want to.