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Subject: RE: Looking for man pages
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 16:18:44 -0400
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From: "Bob McConnell" <rvm AT CBORD DOT com>
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com 
> [mailto:cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com] On Behalf Of Brian Dessent
> Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2007 3:53 PM
> To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
> Subject: Re: Looking for man pages
> 
> Bob McConnell wrote:
> 
> > But you are sending me to the SUS documentation, which is 
> also missing
> > those differences? That seems rather counter productive.
> > 
> 
> The SUSv3 (POSIX) specifies an abstract ideal standard, not any one
> particular implementation.  The Linux manpages document a specific
> implementation of this standard, one which has historically been
> somewhat militant about "we will do what the standard says 
> when it makes
> sense to us, but we will invent extensions when we disagree with it."
> 
> Or in other words, it is a bug if Cygwin doesn't implement something
> that POSIX says it should.  It's not a bug if Cygwin doesn't or can't
> implement some glibc extension or optimization (though of course for
> porting it would be desirable if we could as much as 
> possible.)  In that
> sense, using the POSIX spec as documentation when programming under
> Cygwin is a good idea; in fact it's a good idea to code to POSIX no
> matter what OS you're using, since otherwise you're liable to use
> nonportable constructs that are specific to your operating system.
> 
> > Are there any documents available that explain those 
> differences, or are
> > they only held in the programmers' heads at this point?
> 
> Cygwin includes a list of which functions from the various 
> standards it
> implements and where it differs.  This is at
> <http://cygwin.com/cygwin-api/cygwin-api.html>, though I don't know if
> this reflects the recent cleanup that was done to this documentation.
> 
> Brian

I suspect that it is significant that this list contains what is
compatible, not what is not? That suggests that what I really need is
the inverse of that list, unless every function missing from that list
is not implemented at all.

OK, so the first step is to convert the SUS HTML into a more usable
format. Or do they already make the source files available? Then verify
and add details to the compatibility list, and finally apply the
differences defined to the files from step one. Only the second and
third steps require manual work. Only the second requires a lot of
knowledge about your implementation, and it should be done after each
significant update anyway.

I will look into doing steps one and three if you can get someone to
update the compatibility list. Any specifics that can be added to that
list would be useful to more than just this conversion. Yes, I prefer
man over HTML or Info by that much.

Thank you,

Bob McConnell

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