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Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: tla1.2 on cygwin


From: Tom Lord
Subject: Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: tla1.2 on cygwin
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 15:06:10 -0800 (PST)

    > From: "Gary V. Vaughan" <address@hidden>

    > Please take a look at
    > http://www.xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/_/fileCaseSens.html before you 
dismiss
    > case insensitive file systems out of hand.

I'm not dismissing them out of hand.   I'm denying that changing arch 
to cope with them is in any way beneficial or necessary.

Lot's of tools are case sensitive that work perfectly servicably on 
case insensitive file systems.   Arch is like those.

To avoid problems, if you care about your archives being usable on
such systems, don't choose names that differ only in case.   For
example, at one time (in address@hidden) I had two categories:

        LabNotes

and 

        labnotes

and, in the future, in light of this thread, I'm unlikely to do that
again.

But what Dustin has been lobbying for is changes to arch that won't
really solve the issues with case insensitive names -- but will work
around one particular case that he's encountered.  It can't even be
regarded as a "partial step" towards some more comprehensive case
solution -- it just, more or less by coincidence, works around the
issues in one particular use case.

When I say that I don't take such filesystems seriously, I mean that
as a general rule of thumb, I don't think they require anything
special of application developers.   They cause problems for users,
sure.   They are design mistakes in the systems in question, sure.  It
would add insult to injury to break applications to accomodate them,
sure.

I acknowledge that the problems found when using them are real and
serious but here's the thing: this isn't where to solve them.   Ask
people not to use names that differ only in case.   And, yes, by all
means, lobby your vendor and/or think about how you can escape from
being dependent on your bogus vendor.

The "rule of thumb" that application writers should ignore these
issues aren't absolute.  For example, if Dustin had complained that
arch sometimes creates two fixed-name temp files in a single
directory, differing only by case -- that'd be something to fix.  It
would be a change that doesn't disrupt other users.  It would be easy.
It wouldn't complicate the code.  It'd be the only way to work around
an instance of the problem.  But what he's asked for doesn't satisfy
any of those criterea.

-t





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