Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com From: "Paul Derbyshire" To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2002 03:34:52 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: thread about Directory names containing spaces and GDB Reply-to: derbyshire AT globalserve DOT net Message-ID: <3D49FDDC.11244.6C9D6C3B@localhost> In-reply-to: Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-description: Mail message body On 1 Aug 2002 at 11:32, John Vincent wrote: > When a package is ported, if it originally didn't tolerate > file names with spaces, than it won't after porting. If you > use a ported program, and you want it to tolerate spaces, you > should talk to the program maintaners, not the cygwin porter > (unless they happen to be the same). This would be considered > off-topic on the cygwin list. Would it be? Problems involving spacey paths don't tend to occur on other comparable systems, only Cygwin. (DJGPP seems to handle them OK, which is especially interesting since it's also got ported unix tools...) Also, must it require changing every program that is intolerant? There may be a way to change the cygwin.dll to magically fix the problem for all programs linked against it. There might not be, but it's worth investigating. If the emulation layer can deal with one more peculiarity specific to the host environment it becomes that much better. > Unix/Linux/POSIX allows spaces in file names just like windows, > some programs tolerate them, some don't. This used to be a big > issue, but in general, modern binaries don't have this problem, > and it's only a problem in some scripts. Scripts that don't defensively quote arguments, generally. I'd say if everyone uses lots of spacey paths with Cygwin it might lead to a lot of obscure bugs getting fixed some of which might have other side effects :) > There's no guarantee that the next version will be as useful > to you as the last. There's no guarantee of anything. Open source software isn't really less trustworthy or reliable than commercial software. In fact it's more so. Commercial vendors who guarantee anything are actually not being honest. > Very often this is a reference to information elsewhere... Fine by me. References in the form of URLs or /usr/doc filenames or man page names are useful. References of a vague sort that would require spending half an hour trying various vague queries in a search engine are not very useful and less welcome consequently. Such searches also needlessly duplicate work -- someone has to search for and find something that someone else already had found once, and had an exact address for. > 2. because it keeps the volume of discussions on this list lower. This > is simply a practical expedient, not a philosophical poition. Vague references won't succeed here. They just prompt questions asking for something more specific. Flamewars also waste bandwidth, needless to say. > 4. because they believe that they are showing the questioner how to > find answers to this type of question in general. Some questioners > will find this patronising, while others will find it generally useful. A URL to a specific reference I don't find patronizing. A suggestion to search Google I don't find useful or patronizing. A suggestion that I'm asking the wrong questions, should know better, am stupid for configuring whatever whatever way, or anything to that effect I don't find useful but do find patronizing. Responses that make the original poster wrong in some way are bad for two reasons: one, they don't usually contain useful suggestions, and when they do their tone makes the original poster resistant to those suggestions; two, they force the original poster to respond in their own defense, dragging them unavoidably into an argument, and this tends to continue and waste a lot of bandwidth. > Sometimes the reference to information elsewhere is not sufficient > to answer the questions in the questioners mind, note that like > the software itself, the answers are *free* with no guarantees of > helpfulness or perspicasity. Surely it's possible for someone to guarantee that their response is courteous? Even if not useful? Anyway, if I get a specific reference and it doesn't satisfy me I just ask for more info. If I'm then told to reread the original reference because "it should have been enough" or whyever, that's not useful and I might get annoyed. Pointing me to references won't produce complaints, unless they're not free. Telling me to use a reference without pointing me to it (unless it's obvious where it is, like with a man page) or being insulting or needlessly vague -- those provoke complaints. And I don't see why the difference seems too subtle for some people to grasp... -- 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/