Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Windows support in Bazaar (and tla)?

[John Arbash Meinel]

address@hidden wrote:

> Hello All,
>
> I have noticed that the Bazaar homepage states "windows binary download"
> as a first item in a list of features to come. So I'd like to ask, how
> well does Bazaar currently work on Windows. Are the issues with long
> paths fixed?
I don't think Bazaar works at all on windows yet. I think they want to,
but I don't believe they have started yet.

> Also I'd like to ask about the older window ports mentioned on the Wiki
> on http://wiki.gnuarch.org/Native_20WIN32_20Support. Are they still
> maintained, superseeded by another solution or simply dided from lack of
> interest?
Well, I'm the developer of the latest cygwin port, which I actively use.
It still has some issues with paths (though it does *much* better). If
you are a little bit careful, it works just fine. I would guess this
could actually be ported into baz, as the changes aren't that great.

But because it doesn't optimally work, I started some effort to switch
how patch-logs are kept in the {arch} directory. If you put them into a
zipfile, a lot of the path issues become much better.

I have a pretty good start on it, creating a zipfile library compatible
with arch, and then doing some work to get a vu plugin that makes the
zipfile look like a regular filesystem. I even got some of the munging
work done, so that submitting to the archive would look like a standard
commit. It isn't complete, though, and right now I have to be working on
my dissertation. I'm also curious to see where Tom's current
librification efforts are going, since they seem to be going well, when
I get the time, I would actually like to develop the zip version in the
latest framework.

As far as the others go. Lode Leroy dropped support for his cygwin
version. His tla-1.2 is still the only one that can support any length
name (because he compresses most directories down to a single digit).
It's a little slow, and doesn't support spaces in filenames. His
tla-1.2.1 would support spaces in filenames, but he missed a fix to
"patch" so that it does the right thing with line endings. It's probably
a trivial patch to get it working correctly, but I never got set up to
be able to compile his version. He also didn't keep an archive (he just
kept patch files against the tla source). So it is a little bit trickier
than just doing a "tla get" configure, make, make install.

Johannes's port to use a native win32 binding, rather than cygwin, has
seen some work, but not a lot lately. When I've tried to use it, I had
problems with ssh hanging, so I couldn't get any access. There is
certainly potential there, and his would be the only one that would
trick windows into handling longer paths (if you prepend with '\\?\' you
disable the parser, and it lets you use really long paths.)

> Thanks,
>
> Jan Hudec
That's the state as far as I know it.
If you are going to use my cygwin version, I have both a cygwin setup
repository, and just a plain binary download you can use. If you use it,
I recommend keeping your archive names as short as possible, and then
try to keep the category/patch names short as well. "tla--devo" works
great. "my-project-name--first-branch-for-user-interface--0.1" doesn't
work very well.

John
=:->

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