Mail Archives: djgpp/1997/01/18/02:46:28
Dave Pearson <davep AT hagbard DOT demon DOT co DOT uk> writes:
> These days, thanks to DJGPP and the port of the GNU utils that have
> been done with it, I've managed to do away with just about every 16bit
> clone Unix command. Just about everything is now 32bit and also
> supports long filenames under Win95.
>
> However, one that is still kicking around is the 'file' command. So, I
> was wondering, has anyone ported this using DJGPP?
The GNUish project contains 16- and 32- bit ports of Darwin's `file'
to OS/2 and DOS. The 32bit port is for emx, but perhaps it will
compile easily with djgpp.
One downside is that this port is a few years old. At the time,
Darwin was passing control on to new developers, and there was no
interest in moving OS/2 and DOS changes into the main sources (perhaps
the situation has changed--I do not know).
Porting `file' was not difficult, but some work was needed to replace
fork(), etc. Also, some OS/2-specific code was added. One weakness
in the port that I did concerns the "unwinding" of compressed files: I
used a temporary hack to suppress pipe errors, and never got back to
clean it up.
If you work on file, perhaps you would consider coordinating changes
for djgpp, emx, and msc, so that all OS/2 and DOS users benefit.
I'm willing to contribute testing and patches for emx and msc for
OS/2 and DOS.
(`file' attempts to determine the kind of file using built-in tests and
a separate "magic" file. A port for OS/2 and DOS can be found in the
GNUish project, http://www.simtel.net/simtel.net/. Documentation
on GNUish appears in gnuish.htm and gnuish.inf.)
--
--Darrel Hankerson hankedr AT mail DOT auburn DOT edu
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