Mail Archives: cygwin/2006/05/09/22:44:48
Charles D. Russell wrote:
> I use zip and gzip for backup files, where a bug is unlikely to be
> detected before the problem is catastrophic. Thus I like to stick to
> old, well-tested versions, and am interested in understanding where
> problems might arise. I would have thought that the cygwin executable
> would be the same as that obtained by taking the standard source and
> running make.
>
Do you really think that every cygwin package compiles out-of-box with
no changes? Not even close to true! In this case, there are a number
of changes -- even in the "old, well-tested versions" that you've been
happily using. For your perusal, I've attached the patches -- of
course, you could easily have downloaded the -src packages and extracted
these yourself.
The changes boil down to three areas: (1) ensuring we do not use
windows-isms when we should be using cygwin/posix-isms (2) ensuring that
files are opened in binary, not text, mode (e.g. ensuring we don't use
posix-isms when we should use windows-isms!), and (3) routine changes to
the build system (enabling DESTDIR installs, building outside the source
directory, .exe extensions on applications, etc)
> What is special about cygwin that requires patches?
Notwithstanding the 'use posix instead of windows' ethos, we ARE,
undeniably, running on windows. That's special. Most
non-autotool-based packages (like zip and unzip) which have been ported
to windows, do so making assumptions about make/nmake, msvc-cl/gcc, etc.
These assumptions are usually wrong for cygwin, as we are a hybrid
blend with posix and gcc features, but also some windows restrictions.
Why does cygwin require patches, indeed...
--
Chuck
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