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Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 12:15:23 -0400
From: Christopher Faylor <cgf AT redhat DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com, gdb AT sources DOT redhat DOT com
Subject: Re: [1.3.3] breaks serial i/o?
Message-ID: <20011019121523.A26429@redhat.com>
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References: <20011018161003 DOT A3059 AT saturn DOT billgatliff DOT com> <20011018222406 DOT C11830 AT redhat DOT com> <20011019085618 DOT A5013 AT saturn DOT billgatliff DOT com>
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On Fri, Oct 19, 2001 at 08:56:18AM -0500, William A. Gatliff wrote:
>> >Suggestions, patches, signs of moral support, etc. would all be most
>> >graciously accepted.  Thanks for the help,
>> 
>> No suggestions, patches, or signs of moral support here.
>> 
>> You realize that you had 52 lines in your message and the majority of
>> your text dealt with the reason why you need to have your problem fixed,
>> right?
>
>Uh, I appreciate the time you spent analyzing the text of my email,
>rather than its intent.  Note that my request began with the word
>SUGGESTIONS.

And, guess what? I actually lied.  I supplied some SUGGESTIONS.

>> It is a curious phenomenon that people often seem to think that
>> describing the fact that they are having a problem (with the usual
>> accompanying sense of urgency!) is just the same thing as actually
>> describing the problem in some detail.
>
>At the moment, you're looking at all the detail I've got.  I've spent
>the last day making sure that other stuff wasn't broken too, I was
>hoping that someone would just say "oh yea, we know about that--- it
>won't be fixed for a while."  Which would have given me all the
>information I needed.
>
>I did, in fact, get an answer like that.  And then I got yours.

Huh?  Who sent you an answer like that?  They were wrong.  If something
broke between 1.3.2 and 1.3.3 it should be fixed ASAP.  Right now there
is no knowing what is broken.  Apparently it is something to do with
serial I/O and hardware flow control.  That's all that I know.

>> In the next expected step of this ritual bug reporting technique, a
>> cygwin guru is supoosed to smack their heads and say "Serial I/O?!
>> You're right!  It's broken!  Here's a fix."  Unfortunately, that's
>> not the way it works.
>
>I realize that.  You aren't dealing with your typical newbie here.

Hmm.  It had all of the earmarks of a newbie question.  It had the
description of your life followed by an indication of how urgent your
problem was.

I would have expected that a non-newbie might have provided details
like "I'm connected to my board using a standard crossover serial cable.
The serial settings are 9600 BAUD, no parity.  From inspecting the
gdb code, it looks like the software flow control settings are being
set correctly."  Or, "I set the flow control using the 'mode' command."

I would especially have expected some details if you were in as urgent
need of assistance as you suggested.

>> If you want this fixed in 1.3.4 then you'll have to provide a test
>> case which illustrates the problem or some kind of details that
>> would help someone track down the problem.  For instance, I believe
>> that http://www.sysinternals.com/ has a utility for monitoring
>> serial I/O.  It might be useful to see what's going on with that
>> utility to help track down the cygwin problem.
>
>Hmmm, maybe you *did* read the intent of my email after all?  Perhaps
>I misjudged you...  Nah.

Ditto.

>> Otherwise, if you can't provide details that would allow to debug
>> this, dropping back to 1.3.2 will be a short-term "solution" at best
>> since 1.3.2 will disappear when 1.3.4 is released -- any day now.
>
>Honestly, I'm actually thinking now that mingw would be a better
>long-term solution.  I'm pulling all mention of Cygwin from the
>article.

Ok.  I'm glad that you found a solution that works for you.

And, I'm very glad that you aren't producing an article that instructs
people to search the internet for an old snapshot.  That could easily
have created a lot of confusion in the cygwin mailing list.

cgf

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