Re: Zshell for win32

[Andrej Borsenkow <Andrej.Borsenkow@mow.siemens.ru>]

On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, Bart Schaefer wrote:

> On Mar 20,  2:31pm, vipin aravind wrote:
> } Subject: Zshell for win32
> }
> } Zshell32:-  This is going to be a port of unix open source shell(Zshell)
> } The idea of the port is to evolve an open source shell for native win32.
> } It will be based heavily on Zshell(3.1.9 or 4.0.1). Future versions of
> } Zshell32 will be based on the Zshell port of 3.1.9 or 4.0.1 and not on future
> } versions of zshell.This is important for Zshell32 to evolve in win32.
>
> If what you're creating is not going to be zsh, then it should not have
> a name resembling zsh or zshell.  I'm willing to give you all the help
> I can to produce a win32 port of zsh that will at least track, and ideally
> could be folded into, the regular zsh sources -- but I'm not pleased at
> the idea of wading through questions from confused windows users who don't
> know that the shell they have is not really zsh.
>

Fair enough.

> }   Certain factors like NO  forking in win32 puts a severe limit on the
> }   port.
>
> I thought Amol's code had a pretty good fork emulation built into it; in
> fact unless I'm very much mistaken I've had some success using that fork
> emulation in porting other (smaller) unix programs to win32.
>

I wonder, what are the benefits of Win32 version against Cygwin
 one? Zsh relies heavily on Unix semantic; to implement something that can
be called Zsh(-clone) on Win32 you need an emulation layer - and that is
exactly what Cygwin does. Creating Yet Another Unix Emulation on Win32
does not look very promising. And you need just a single DLL to run Cygwin
program (you do not need to install the whole Cygwin).

Or quite a number of Zsh features have to be omitted. But then it is not
Zsh anymore.


>
> }   2)    First release will support no extra modules and multilanguage
> } 	  support.
>
> Not surprising, though the cygwin build should provide some hints on how
> to construct DLLs for the modules.
>

What do you mean under "multilanguage support"? We do not have any as of
now.



-andrej