Message-ID: <369CAB06.AC33AF89@oranda.demon.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 14:17:42 +0000
From: "Gary V. Vaughan" <gvaughan AT oranda DOT demon DOT co DOT uk>
Organization: Aethos Communication Systems ltd.
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To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
CC: Alexandre Oliva <oliva AT dcc DOT unicamp DOT br>, Andris Pavenis <pavenis AT lanet DOT lv>,
        "Mark E." <snowball3 AT usa DOT net>, autoconf AT gnu DOT org,
        djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: patch for autoheader.sh
References: <Pine DOT SUN DOT 3 DOT 91 DOT 990113155236 DOT 14951E-100000 AT is>
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Reply-To: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 13 Jan 1999, Gary V. Vaughan wrote:
> 
> > > Ugh!  Better avoid it.  /dev/null is so abused that we'd die before
> > > we could replace all uses of it with the result of the configure
> > > test.
> >
> > I don't want to die.  Lets not mess with configure then.  Perhaps the
> > win95 failure modes are pathological... and we can ignore the problem
> > for the general case?
> 
> Sorry, you cannot ignore this.  Neither MS-DOS nor Windows 9X can handle
> a file being renamed under their feet while it is open.  DOS just goes
> amok (how much amok depends on how large the file being renamed is, and
> what optional software, like a disk cache, is installed); Windows 9X
> simply fails the call.  Only Windows NT handles these cases like Unix
> does.
> 
> If /dev/null is verboten, maybe what Andris suggested with 1>&2 is
> better?

If it works in that particular case, then that is good, and should
probably be done.  However, as Alexandre pointed out, use of /dev/null
in autoconf/automake/libtool/*.m4 is all-pervasive and if we try to
change it, it will kill us all (and our families).

=)O|

Cheers,
	Gary.