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Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 11:18:44 -0500
From: Christopher Faylor <cgf-use-the-mailinglist-please AT cygwin DOT com>
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Subject: Re: Bug: cygport fails when the working directory pathname  contains   spaces
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On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 03:12:55AM -0600, Yaakov (Cygwin/X) wrote:
>On 27/01/2010 02:36, Matthias Andree wrote:
>> This isn't acceptable as a generic statement.
>
>Nor is CCing messages to maintainers:
>
>http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#PPIOSPE
>
>> If you're unwilling to fix the cygport parts of the bug, that's fine,
>> but claiming that fixing it were generally not worthwhile amounts to
>> blessing insecure programming practices.
>
>Remember that cygport serves a single purpose: to build packages, and 
>"fixing" cygport will not guarantee that a package will build in a path 
>containing spaces.  For instance, both (autoconf-)configure and libtool 
>(by far the most common build system out there) are shell scripts, and 
>have certainly not worked in these situations in the past.  (I can't 
>speak for the current situation wrt these tools.)  So there is little 
>benefit in pretending to fix cygport when the result will be exactly the 
>same.

And don't forget a little tool called "make".

>Maybe I should just include a sanity check to force cygport not to run 
>in such paths instead.
>
>> Of course fixing cygport won't assure its user that the package itself
>> is safe in paths with blanks, but at least then you can say that you've
>> done your part and the fix is SOEP (someone else's problem).
>
>Shifting the blame on to others won't help anybody one bit.  The package 
>STILL will not build, so what has anybody gained?
>
>> That other parts might fail is NOT AN excuse to not do your own job in a
>> way that breaks other people's expectations.
>
>I've been around long enough to know that many (most?) people's 
>expectations about Cygwin are generally incorrect.  As for those who 
>generally use cygport, namely package maintainers, they obviously DON'T 
>USE SPACES because I can't remember such a complaint before.

And, the most important point here is that what Yaakov does isn't a
"job".  It's a volunteer effort.  A gift.  He can decide what he does or
doesn't do and insisting that he isn't doing his job because he doesn't
want to perform a pointless exercise seems rather rude to me.

cgf

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