Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 17:19:39 +0300
From: "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
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To: "Andrew Cottrell" <acottrel AT ihug DOT com DOT au>
Message-Id: <8011-Sat21Jul2001171938+0300-eliz@is.elta.co.il>
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Subject: Re: Comments on GCC 3.0 distribution
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> From: "Andrew Cottrell" <acottrel AT ihug DOT com DOT au>
> Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 21:00:46 +1000
> 
> If you are trying to get DJGPP to work on Windows 2000 then all of the other
> essential GNU and MISC apps may also need to be re-built. See me other email
> with regards to Make as an example.

My nessage was specifically about GCC 3.0, since Andris asked about
that.  GCC 3.0 being a new package, it makes a lot of sense to try to
make it as reliable as we could on all supported platforms.  But we
could discuss the other packages as well.

IIRC, there are 3 problems which might cause trouble on Windows 2000
that are relevant to applications available from SimTel.NET:

  - the NTVDM crashes when DPMI programs are nested;

  - the bug in `rename' and `_rename' functions;

  - the problem with FAT32 bit in `_open' and `_creat'.

The last problem only happens if some of the packages are built with
the CVS version of the library.  I know that RHIDE was built with some
library which included FAT32 support, and that GCC 3.0 used the CVS.
But I don't think anything else used the CVS library.

Does anyone know about more packages on SimTel.NET which were built
with FAT32 support?  They probably should all be rebuilt after we fix
`_open' and `_creat'.

The other two problems would require to rebuild applications that use
the affected functions.  If we rebuild them with a version of libc
that is basically djdev203, except that the nested programs and
`rename' bugs are fixed, we won't hit the problems with FAT32.

I won't recommend to rebuild all the applications with the CVS version
of the library, because there are quite a few new features there
(symlinks, FAT32, significant modifications in dosexec.c, etc.) that
are not yet mature enough to be thrown on end users.

> In either case the non technical end users will still make mistakes.

If we replace the packages on SimTel with patched ones, what mistakes
should that cause?