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Re: [bug #46007] texi2dvi Msys support


From: Gavin Smith
Subject: Re: [bug #46007] texi2dvi Msys support
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2015 09:57:50 +0100

On 23 September 2015 at 22:03, Vincent Belaïche
<address@hidden> wrote:
>>> From reading that MikTeX mailing list msys bash does a conversion
>>> from the colon style to the semicolon style
>>
>> AFAIK, it only does that in PATH, but not in other environment
>> variables that uses the PATH style to hold a list of directories.
>>
>
> I also thought that before, but as far as I understood there are in fact
> two steps of conversion:
>
> 1) conversion when bash is loaded : then only the PATH envvar from MSW
>    is converted.
>
> 2) conversion when a non-MSYS program is launched from MSYS, then
>
>    2.1) locally to the subshell where this program is executed, prior to
>      execution any envvar that looks like containing a colon spearated
>      list of directories is converted so that colons are replaced by
>      semicolons, and directories are converted to the MSW native format
>      (except / remains /, ie does not become \ )
>
>
>    2.2) any argument that looks like a FILENAME, or like
>      --some-option=FILENAME, has FILENAME converted from MSYS format to
>      MSW native format (with / remaining /) before passing it to the
>      program.
>
>
> I was more or less conscient of 1) and 2.2), but 2.1) is something that
> I was not aware of. Ignoring 2.2) is what had made me initially &
> erronously think that MikTeX was an MSYS program (otherwise how could
> texi2dvi have been working), but MikTeX is not an MSYS program, and
> texi2dvi was working thanks to MSYS making this 2.1) conversion which
> made TEXINPUTS understandable by MikTeX engines.

This clarifies it a lot. Why do we need to support such a complicated
system? Aren't there other bash interpreters on Windows that can be
used instead, e.g. from MinGW? Are they suitable for running texi2dvi
with MikTeX?

>From what I read MSYS was for running build systems (configure scripts
and makefiles), and not much more -- it wasn't supposed to be suitable
for general use.

If we do support it I hope it doesn't need a lot of code. I'll have a
look at your patches and see if I understand.

Time for a rant. Nothing more is after it, so you can stop reading now
if you want. Portability issues consume far more of the time I spend
on Texinfo that I would wish. I can understand why some projects say
to h*ll with it and say they will only support the most common
systems. Shell script portability particularly is a nuisance. It is
self-evident that efforts into improving portability of software
should be commensurate with the benefits.  Those benefits could be if
systems are widely used (in the case of Windows), or even if they are
not widely used, if people are using those systems to do great things.
An important concern is what promotes the freedom of users. With some
operating systems (like AIX), they fall into misuse, and then we can
forget about them. Unfortunately, it seems that Windows is not dying a
death, so we are encouraged to keep on supporting it. The only way I
could have any love for Windows is if it became obsolete, and then
after a few decades I could look back on it as a quaint old system,
like the Commodore Amiga. I'm tempted to propose that we give Windows
a kick in the head by removing all support for it.



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