Re: different CVS_SERVER for different hosts

[Paul Edwards]

"Derek Robert Price" <derek@ximbiot.com> wrote in message 
news:mailman.2830.1067532992.21628.bug-cvs@gnu.org...
> |>|E.g. fork() is provided?  And if it is, it will work on any
> |>|C89 compiler?  Borland C++ 3.1 for DOS is 100%
> |>|ISO-conforming.  So is SAS/C for MVS (OS/390).
> |>
> |>These compilers don't provide access to system functions?
> |
> |There is no such system function on DOS or MVS.
> |
> |Ergo, any application relying on fork() being available is a
> |long way from being portable.
>
> You could have fooled me.  CVS relies on fork() (or vfork()) and it sure
> seems to run on a lot of platforms.  That's been true for at least 8 years.

Where "a lot of platforms" means "a lot of unix-like platforms",
because CVS is probably Posix-conforming, which is a hell of
a lot different from standard C89.

I mentioned just 2 systems that don't have fork().  Basically
8 years ago when someone first used fork(), they made CVS
Unix-specific instead of C89 compliant.  Since then a lot of
systems have provided much of the "Unix" (now euphemistically
called "posix") baggage that CVS depends on.  That doesn't
make it portable, it means that the other systems have gone to
a great deal of effort to make up for applications that don't
conform to C89.

BTW, "a lot of platforms" currently doesn't even include gcc
under Windows 98, despite the fact that this particular
environment is both C89 and Posix.

I don't know how it is possible to write an application that is
C89 and Posix compliant, that fails to run out of the box on a
platform that is C89 and Posix compliant.

But where there's a will, there's a way.

BFN.  Paul.