RE: [Devel] FT2 + cygwin

[Fleischer, Karsten (K.)]

Hi all,

> Platform autodetection is always prone to failures. You can 
> use it when
> you run things in a less or more controlled environment but 
> it will always
> break when released to the public. I myself would give up and 
> remove the
> feature completely or make it available with an explicit "I 
> know what I am
> doing" option only (something like "make setup autodetect").

I wouldn't give up the feature, but I could think of an 'override' option
such as "make setup unix" to disable auto-detection. This would perfectly
fit my needs. I'll try it out.

> To say something constructive: in order to detect unixish systems and
> avoid being fooled by Cygwin, I'd look for /etc/profile. AFAIK, Cygwin
> does not provide this file (even if it provides a bunch of other /etc
> files).

/etc/profile _is_ provided by Cygwin and UWIN.
As David mentioned correctly, we cannot look for such files, because some
users have a unix like directory structure on their Windows drive i.e. from
oddly ported software. There are also Cygwin users who prefer installing in
C:\ rather than C:\cygwin, even if this is strongly discouraged by the
Cygwin developers. If they tried to build a Windows version, they would end
up with unix being auto-detected. Sigh...

BTW, it's not Cygwin/UWIN fooling me, it's Windows!


Cheers,

Karsten