Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Message-ID: <000301c1d4cc$156a7600$1021a53d@chiway>
From: "Wu Yongwei" <adah AT sh163 DOT net>
To: <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: Re: cygwin1.dll bug in ftime
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 21:41:11 +0800
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Glibc is at least an important implementation. Don't we need compatibility?

Note that my quotation says about "the GNU operating system", and even at
that time gettimeofday should return -1 and set errno. Cygwin does not do
it.

I wrote the patch. I argue for its legitimacy. In fact, it is scroll-back. I
just (mostly) picked code from an old version.

Maybe I am wrong to say "obvious". However, is following a way that breaks
less code a worse way? If following BSD does not harm anybody and keep more
code happily running, WHY NOT?

I have said about changing the code in another message. I don't think I need
to repeat again.

Best regards,

Wu Yongwei

--- Original Message from J. J. Farrell ---

From: "Wu Yongwei" <adah AT netstd DOT com>>
> This is from the glibc documentation (is glibc meaningless to the Cygwin
> project?):

I'm not sure what you mean by "meaningless", but glibc is of no
particular relevance to Cygwin.

> ...
>      The GNU operating system does not support using struct
>      timezone to represent time zone information; that is an
>      obsolete feature of 4.3 BSD. Instead, use the facilities
>      described in 21.4.8 Functions and Variables for Time Zones.

You quote documentation that tells you not to do what you are doing.

> I do not understand you quite clearly. And I want to emphasize again that
IT
> USED TO WORK! Do I need to write patches so that the code is unpatched?

If anything is going to change, somebody has to write patches.
If you're the one that wants it to change, it seems reasonable
that you should be the one who writes the patches.

> Also notes the usage of "unspecified". "Unspecified" means the standard
does
> not say anything about the implementation, and, IMHO, the implementors are
> free to choose the best practices. I think it is obviously a good way to
> follow BSD.
>
> Am I wrong?

You're wrong to say that it's obvious. Why is it better to follow
BSD than any other version of UNIX? Why is it better to do anything
in particular with an obsolete feature that has been deprecated for
many many years?

> Thank you for your suggestions. The points are:
>
> 1) Cygwin did very well, but not now;
>
> 2) I was not using ftime to get time, but to get timezone information.
>
> 3) timezone variable is not usable in Cygwin.
>
> So timezone is now not portable. Cygwin broke some "unportable" code.

Is that a surprise? Unportable code, by definition, is likely to
break between different releases of an OS, and between different
OSes. Instead of spending time complaining here, you'd be better
off generating patches to introduce the behaviour you want. Even
better, spend the time changing your code to use the standard
portable ways of doing what you want to do.


--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Bug reporting:         http://cygwin.com/bugs.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/