Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 03:27:23 +0900
From: Stephen Turnbull <turnbull AT shako DOT sk DOT tsukuba DOT ac DOT jp>
To: DJGPP AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject: problems with contrib sources.. should this be happening?

I would guess that the problem with the contrib sources is that
certain things change from system to system and from version to
version of GCC.  Even with the typos, probably somebody looked at
quickly, saw it wasn't gonna work anymore, and changed it without
testing.  If you want to see what it takes to make sure that the same
code compiles on a wide variety of systems, look at what Imake does
for Xwindows.  Another example is that some people use GNU Make, some
people use NDMake, some people use Borland or MS makes, and some
people use QMake (mostly DV & DVX users).  Unfortunately, the DOS
makes (at least QMake, and I think Borland and MS as well) do not
require tabs before commands in makefiles.  Guess what happens when
you try to use such makefiles under GNU Make?

I'm not sure exactly which programs you're talking about.  What you
could do, of course, is take the original programs and your edited
version, run them through "diff -C 2" and send that somewhere.  (If
you think it's worth sending them to DJ, make sure you read the readme
on bug fixes and the like; he requires very specific formats for very
good reasons.)

In the meantime (ie, until DJ says what he intends to do/wishes
someone else would do), if someone else wants to coordinate the
project, I would be willing to supply appropriate access and a few MB
on the Yaseppochi-gumi server.  But this is only worth it if you're
willing to make reasonably sure that the versions you produce are
going to work on any reasonable DJGPP system, including but not
limited to:
(1) no dependency on where the top of the DJGPP subtree is (c:\djgpp
    and h:\NFS\usr\local\compilers\djgpp should both work)
(2) works with GNU make, and preferably tested with other common makes
(3) document exactly the system you used to compile, including the
    versions of make, C, C++, and binutils
(4) make sure that the includes are compatible with current and future
    (ie ANSI and Posix) configurations
(5) you actually, really, truly successfully compiled the uploaded
    version :-)
The goal of course is eventually to reintegrate with the DJGPP
distribution, but in the meantime it's probably better to keep them
out of DJ's hair (at least until we have V2!!---when half of them will
have to change again to comply with ANSI and Posix :-( )

Certainly, RMS, DJ, CWS, LD, EB, MW, EZ, and a few other sets of
initials I don't remember offhand have done far more than their share
and more than most could.  But that doesn't mean you can't contribute
to keeping our environment clean!

-- 
Stephen Turnbull  /  Yaseppochi-gumi  /  <turnbull AT shako DOT sk DOT tsukuba DOT ac DOT jp>
http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/      anon FTP: turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
Check out Kansai-WWW, too ------------> http://pclsp2.kuicr.kyoto-u.ac.jp/