Date: Tue, 30 Dec 1997 10:12:06 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: Myknees <myknees AT aol DOT com>
cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: LD looks at zip drive
In-Reply-To: <19971229182301.NAA17017@ladder01.news.aol.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.971230101149.577B-100000@is>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Precedence: bulk


On 29 Dec 1997, Myknees wrote:

> It is Windows that is telling which program is currently running, and it has
> always been accurate so far.

Your message didn't say that you were running from Windows 95.

> but it is easy to see LD, since everything stops while the zip drive
> wakes up, and the title bar shows that LD is the active program.

Questions:

	1) Does the same happen when you run LD from the DOS prompt
	   inside the DOS box?  (I already asked this in a previous
	   message.)

	2) Do you have some kind of antivirus software installed?  (If
           you do, it might be checking your disks when a program is
           invoked.)

	3) Does the zip drive letter appear anywhere in the
           DJGPP-related environment variables, including on
           DJGPP.ENV?

	4) What is that zip drive used for on your system?

	5) Did you install some add-on packages, such as RSXNTDJ?  (It
           has a modified linker, I think.)

> > The linker has a known behavior (bug? feature? misfeature? 
> > You decide) whre it will access any drive a directory on which
> > is in the PATH, so if his Zip drive is E: and he has E: or
> > E:\FOO\BAR in his path he'd get exactly what he's getting.
> 
> That makes sense, but the E: drive, which is my zip drive, is not on
> the path

I don't know why does it make sense (to me, it doesn't, since LD
doesn't search the PATH at all AFAIK).  Anyway, I cannot reproduce
this on my machine.  Here's what I did:

     - stuffed "B:\;" in front of the PATH
     - run "c:\djgpp\bin\gcc foo.cc -o foo -lstdcx -liostream"

and didn't see the floppy in B: accessed at all during the entire
compile/link.  (I used the explicit path name of gcc.exe so that DOS
itself won't need to look along the PATH.)  If I use `gxx' instead of
`gcc', the floppy *is* accessed, but that's because gxx.exe is looking
for gcc.exe along the PATH, and it happens long before LD is called.

The above test was on plain DOS (no Windows) and with Binutils 2.7.

If none of the above gives a clue, posting your system configuration
files would be a good idea.