Re: Gnus UU support

Re: Gnus UU support

[Eric Swenson]

Thanks, Andrew for your explanation.  It makes sense to me.  Now, the
more important question, should the Gnus sources (and indeed any Gnu
Emacs sources) try to take this kind of stuff into account?  Should I
attempt to get the Gnus folks to incorporate my change into the Gnus
sources?  I'm kind of leary about trying given that most folks who
write code for Gnu Emacs look down rather loudly at NT-specific
changes.  Folks who run GNU Emacs on non-win32 platforms are
all-to-often apt to say "that's what you get for running on Win32".  

My change just adds a unwind-protected call to cd around the code that
starts the process.  Should I attempt to get the Gnus folks to make
the change or is there another avenue (like you and the other NT Emacs
maintainers)?  

Thanks.  -- Eric

Andrew Innes <andrewi@harlequin.co.uk> writes:

> Not quite - you have tripped over a "feature" of DOS/NT command shells,
> which derives from the DOS drive/directory API.  Each drive maintains
> its own concept of working directory (per process on NT), and the wd for
> a drive can be changed without changing the cwd for the process (except
> that the cwd will be changed by changing the wd of the current drive).
> 
> [Note that on NT, I gather the command shell goes to some trouble to
> make things appear to work this way, because the underlying API no
> longer has separate functions to change drive and wd, although it still
> supports the ability to change drive, setting cwd based on the wd for
> the new drive.]
> 
> So the `cd' command only tells the shell to change the wd of a drive -
> unless you are changing the wd for the current drive, this does not
> change the cwd for the shell process.
> 
> There is a separate command to change the current drive - just the new
> drive letter and colon alone on the command line.  When you select a new
> drive, that drive's wd becomes the process cwd.
> 
> Unfortunately, this kind of solution will be required on NT, until such
> time as there is a decent shell for NT which can be made to behave like
> Unix shells and is commonly available.
> 
> Given the legacy of the DOS command shell, and the length of time it has
> taken Microsoft to make even modest improvements in it, we cannot really
> expect the standard shell to ever have this ability.

Re: Gnus UU support

[Andrew Innes]

On 15 Jul 1996 13:01:49 +0000, Eric Swenson <ejs@borland.com> said:
>Thanks, Andrew for your explanation.  It makes sense to me.  Now, the
>more important question, should the Gnus sources (and indeed any Gnu
>Emacs sources) try to take this kind of stuff into account?  

Where appropriate and reasonable, yes.

>Should I attempt to get the Gnus folks to incorporate my change into
>the Gnus sources?  I'm kind of leary about trying given that most folks
>who write code for Gnu Emacs look down rather loudly at NT-specific
>changes.  Folks who run GNU Emacs on non-win32 platforms are
>all-to-often apt to say "that's what you get for running on Win32".

Well, Richard Stallman has said (to me at least) he wants Emacs to work
as well as possible on Windows (this is a paraphrase, but I believe it
is an accurate statement of his intent).  He delayed the release of
version 19.31 at the last minute specifically to incorporate my
accumulated patches for NT.

Since then, I've been surprised at his willingness to make changes to
core parts of Emacs to help resolve problems that are specific to
Windows - if the proper way to resolve a problem is to rework core files
(rather than hack a clumsy work-around in NT specific files), then that
is how he wants it done.

While there may be some Emacs contributors who aren't willing to make
changes simply to work around brain-dead "features" or deficiencies in
Windows, in my experience many contributors *are* interested in getting
their packages to work on Windows, or are at least willing to make
modest changes so they work better on Windows.

Aside: although NT is genuinely deficient in some areas compared with
Unix - most notably the weakness of the command shell - there are many
other areas where NT is as or even more powerful than most versions of
Unix.  For that reason, it can often be a useful exercise for package
writers to make their packages work on NT, because it encourages the
discipline of using abstraction and encapsulation - in other words, the
package might be improved even for Unix as a result of identifying and
removing implicit assumptions that are Unix-centric (or specific to
certain versions of Unix).

[Besides, there is the possibility that even dyed-in-the-wool Unix
hackers will someday have reason to use Windows - if that day ever
comes, they would undoubtedly be glad *someone* made the effort to get
their favourite packages to work.  A bit of home away from home.]

>My change just adds a unwind-protected call to cd around the code that
>starts the process.  Should I attempt to get the Gnus folks to make
>the change or is there another avenue (like you and the other NT Emacs
>maintainers)?  

In this case, I would suggest you ask the Gnus developers to incorporate
your patch, or something equivalent to it.  As long as the patch is
fairly clean, works fine on other platforms, and fixes a problem on one
platform, it seems reasonable to include it.

Certainly, I cannot see the command shell on NT being changed any time
soon to make this work.  Even though there are Unix shell ports
available for NT that will work out of the box in this case, not
everyone will have these shells.  Where possible, we want to use the
standard facilities we can expect everyone to have.

AndrewI

Re: Gnus UU support

[Richard Pieri]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

>>>>> "ES" == Eric Swenson <ejs@borland.com> writes:

ES> I'm kind of leary about trying given that most folks who write code
ES> for Gnu Emacs look down rather loudly at NT-specific changes.

Funny, because a couple of really neat features in Gnus were written by
yours truely, including the code which got movemail for POP maildrops
working for Gnus running on Win32 machines.

[...]

ES> My change just adds a unwind-protected call to cd around the code
ES> that starts the process.  Should I attempt to get the Gnus folks to
ES> make the change or is there another avenue (like you and the other
ES> NT Emacs maintainers)?

Definitely inform Lars <larsi@ifi.uio.no> about this.  What as this is
at least technically a bug (ie, mishandling the DOS-like filesystem on a
supported operating system) and he is the primary Gnus maintainer,
bugfixes should go to him.  Do not delay; the sooner he gets the fix the
sooner he can roll it into Gnus 5.3 for the 19.32 release (yes, Gnus 5.3
is being patched along side Gnus 5.2.x).

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-- 
Richard Pieri/Information Services \ When in doubt, cop an attitude. -A cat's
<ratinox@unilab.dfci.harvard.edu>   \ guide to life
http://www.dfci.harvard.edu/         \ 

Re: Gnus UU support

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Andrew Innes <andrewi@harlequin.co.uk>:

> [Besides, there is the possibility that even dyed-in-the-wool Unix
> hackers will someday have reason to use Windows - if that day ever
> comes, they would undoubtedly be glad *someone* made the effort to
> get their favourite packages to work.  A bit of home away from
> home.]

Yup!  There's a danger I'll have to work on NT, instead of UNIX.
Since I have plenty of experience with 3.1/3.11, this was a prospect I
dreaded.  But then I saw emacs, bash, shelltools, gcc, and gmake
running on NT, and I thought "Hey!  This doesn't have to be so bad,
after all..."

Re: Gnus UU support

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Eric Swenson <ejs@borland.com> writes:

> Thanks, Andrew for your explanation.  It makes sense to me.  Now, the
> more important question, should the Gnus sources (and indeed any Gnu
> Emacs sources) try to take this kind of stuff into account?  Should I
> attempt to get the Gnus folks to incorporate my change into the Gnus
> sources?  

Definitely.  Mail me patches and I'll apply them.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@ifi.uio.no * Lars Ingebrigtsen