Re: question: hard-coded file descriptors in stdin/stdout/stderr

[Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>]

On 03/14/2013 12:51:19 PM, Zvi Gilboa wrote:
> >> which ones?
> 
> ... since you are asking...  inspired by musl-libc, I am currently  
> writing a win32
> /win64 open-source library that implements/provides POSIX system  
> calls (see note
> below).  I believe that having a powerful libc with an MIT license  
> available on
> Windows would actually be of great value to the open source community  
> for all
> possible reasons, but that is of course irrelevant to my question:)

All possible reasons? I can't think of one.

I have actually thought about this sort of thing. For example, I did a  
talk at the recent emebedded Linux conference explaining _why_ toybox  
and musl are important to Android:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0

> The main issue here is that the standard file descriptors on Windows  
> are -10
> (STD_INPUT_HANDLE), -11 (STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE), and -12  
> (STD_ERROR_HANDLE).

In DOS, stdin, stdout, and stderr were 0, 1, and 2. What you just  
listed is an explicit violation of posix.

>  I could of course compensate for that in my code and "translate" the  
> POSIX special
> file descriptor numbers to the Windows ones, however it would be more  
> elegant if musl
> -libc used the descriptors defined in <unistd.h>  instead of  
> hard-coded numbers.

You want to introduce non-posix assumptions into musl to make windows  
code more elegant.

Really?

> 
> * as for psxcalls: this is a C library, that exclusively uses the  
> Native API.  It
> attaches to ntdll.dll during run-time, and can thus be compiled as a  
> "native" static
> library with no external dependencies.

Doesn't mingw already exist?

>  While it is currently in its very initial
> stage (and not yet online), the major "obstacle" features --  
> including fork()
> -- have already been implemented.  To remove all doubts,

Remove all doubts? Really? All of them?

> I am aware of Cygwin's existence,

But apparently not mingw.

> yet am looking for a high-performance solution that would be both  
> "clean" (psxcalls-->libc-->user-library-or-application), and flexibly  
> licensed.

How on earth does licensing on WINDOWS matter, since the base OS is  
proprietary?

So this is explicitly "provide free stuff to make paying money to  
Microsoft more appealing"?

Rob