Subject: Re: Cygnus b19 gcc and Mingw32
From: [email-masked] (Paul Kinnucan)

10 Mar 1998 06:01:33 -0800
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To: Gunther Ebert <[email-masked]>,
        Colin Peters <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]

At 11:20 AM 3/9/98 +0100, Gunther Ebert wrote:
>Hi,
>
>it isn't a matter of mingw32. Non-cygwin programs in general
>seem to have such problems when being started from bash (independent
>from the tty settings).
>

>Gunther
>
>Colin Peters wrote:
>> 
>> On a new point. Are Mingw32 programs the only ones suffering from bizarre
>> problems with stdin, stdout and such under bash? I seem to remember
>> something about non-Cygwin32 programs
>> having output disappear, and it definitely happens to me.
>> 

This phenomenon has been discussed on the NTEmacs mailing list. I believe
it was determined there that B19-compiled applications do not
interact with non-B19 apps, e.g., Win32 or B18 apps, via stdin, stdout,
or stderr. Thus, if you are using B19 bash to run a Win32 app or a
B18-compiled app, do not expect to see output from that app in the
bash window. More succinctly, you cannot run Windows apps from the
bash command shell.

The following excerpt from the B19 README file hints obliquely at
this situation:

"Note that a B19-compiled application exec()ing a B18-compiled
application will treat the B18-compiled executable as an ordinary Win32
executable.  This means that open file descriptors and some other
internals will not be inheritted on exec() calls.  The reason for this
is that different shared memory areas are used by the different versions
of the cygwin library.  This may or may not be of importance to you
depending on what you're doing."

As I read the situation, Cygnus seems, with B19, to be moving to 
a situation where Unix apps live in a hermetically sealed world, 
isolated from the Windows environment. Unix is Unix and Windows
is Windows and ne'er the twain shall meet. I think this, if true, is
unfortunate. I want the best of two worlds, not to be forced to live
with one or the other.

- Paul

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