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Re: Gnulib on Windows (native / mingw32) / VMS / etc.


From: Eli Zaretskii
Subject: Re: Gnulib on Windows (native / mingw32) / VMS / etc.
Date: Wed, 16 May 2018 20:34:25 +0300

> From: Paul Smith <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden
> Date: Wed, 16 May 2018 12:53:22 -0400
> 
> On Wed, 2018-05-16 at 19:33 +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > > these values.  Or else I have to create per-system instances of
> > > each of these files, of which I already have 5 just for alloca and
> > > getloadavg and if I do take on glob/fnmatch that number will
> > > balloon.
> > 
> > For the record: what are those 5 systems?  MS-Windows is one, but
> > what are the others?
> 
> Sorry for not being clear: I meant 5 replacement header files that
> contain @-tokens, not 5 supported target systems.

Ah, thanks for clarifications.

> The systems we ostensibly support are POSIX/UNIX, Windows, VMS, MS-DOS
> (?), and AmigaOS (?).

MS-DOS has glob and fnmatch in its library, so it probably doesn't
need those from Gnulib.

> I don't know if anyone actually uses either of the two latter
> platforms anymore, but the last time I asked about ditching Amiga
> support (for example) there were people who objected.  That was some
> years ago now though.

"MS-DOS" is a misnomer in this case: it really means the DJGPP tools
(www.delorie.com/djgpp).  And yes, that is still used, albeit by a
very small group of people.  In particular, I use the DJGPP port of
GNU Make (and other DJGPP ports of GNU software) to build the "MS-DOS"
port of Emacs.

> I've never been entirely clear on the difference between the DOS and
> Windows ports.

They target 2 different operating systems.  Because Windows versions
up to XP included either DOS itself or its good emulation, executables
that needed DOS services could run on Windows, and I believe that is
the source of your confusion.  But since modern versions of Windows
are 64-bit, they no longer support running MS-DOS executables, and the
quality of MS-DOS subsystems on 32-bit versions of modern Windows
systems consistently deteriorates, so soon one will need a true DOS
system or a true emulator to run those.



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