Re: Generalize start-process with keyword args

[Stefan Monnier]

> A simple example is using the cscope package from Cygwin. This installs
> a cscope executable, a cscope-indexer script and cscope.el that uses the
> cscope indexes for symbol lookup. cscope.el can also invoke the indexer
> script to regenerate the indexes (by invoking `cscope-indexing-script'
> with arguments via `start-process').

> This script can easily be reused without modification, by advising
> `start-process to rework its arguments: cahnge PROGRAM to be "bash" and
> prepend "-c" to the PROGRAM-ARGS list. This allows cscope.el to invoke
> the original script from a Win32 emacs build without needing any changes
> to the original package.

But there is no need for such changes if you use the Cygwin version of
Emacs, right?

The root of the problem is that you're trying to run a Cygwin program
from the W32 build of Emacs, while this Cygwin program was designed for
Cygwin-only (you can't run that script directly from the normal W32
command prompt, for example).

Of course, the W32 build of Emacs could try to accommodate Cygwin
programs a bit better, but it seems like it's probably easier to just
use the Cygwin build of Emacs instead (especially now that there's
a Cygwin-W32 build which uses the native GUI).


        Stefan