RE: [bug-diffutils] Bug: diff crashes on Windows when run from Clearcase

[FischerR.External]

> >> In this case, your version of diff appears to have been built for
> >> Windows.  Which distribution did you get it from?  Cygwin, mingw,
> >> Interix, something else?  
> > 
> > It identifies itself by
> > 
> > diff (GNU diffutils) 2.8.7
> > Written by Paul Eggert, Mike Haertel, David Hayes,
> > Richard Stallman, and Len Tower.
> > 
> > Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> > 
> > and it is part of the Gnu utilities for Windows.
> > 
> > See for example: 
> http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/diffutils.htm
> 
> This port does not have a very good track record of staying 
> up-to-date.
>  I can personally recommend the cygwin port as something that is more
> likely to work in this scenario.

I can recommend it too ;-)  Actually, I use cygwin for my own work.
However, in this context, we needed a diff program which has to
run in every Windows environment, without the user requiring to 
install cygwin. AFIK, Cygwin always needs the user to setup his/her
PC for cygwin.

> >> It may be that your particular pre-built
> >> binary is missing some prerequisite libraries, which would 
> be an issue
> >> for your distribution to resolve, rather than upstream diffutils.
> > 
> > Wouldn't this mean that it should always fail, and not only 
> when stored in 
> > a Clearcase dynamic view?
> 
> Not necessarily - it may just mean that the gnuwin32 port of GNU
> utilities to Windows does not have all the workarounds built in like
> other ports such as cygwin.  Therefore, your bug report is better
> directed to the gnuwin32 folks.

Actually, I tried to follow their Website and ended up with a link
pointing to *this* mailing list. That's why I posted it here...

> > Wouldn't it make sense from your side too to find out, 
> *which* system call
> > fails? Maybe there is an easy workaround; and if it is not, 
> at least the 
> > incompatibility to Clearcase could be documented.
> 
> Not from my side - I intentionally stay as far away from ClearCase as
> possible.

Understandable, but I wouldn't expect you to actually setup Clearcase.
I guess you have some debugging facility anyway. If you can send me
a debugging version of diff.exe, I could run it on Clearcase and send
you the output. Maybe you quickly see what's going on. After all, I'm
probably not the only one with this problem....

Ronald