Re: compiling CVS under cygwin

[Hans-Bernhard B. <br...@ph...>]

Hardy Griech wrote:
> Unfortunately there is no "auto" option for cygwins mount.

There's on in their libc, but apparently it's *still* not been exported 
to the mount options....

> What I've understood so far is, that it is safer to mount with text.  

For correctly ported programs: yes.

Standard C and POSIX only know two kinds of opening files: "binary" and 
"default".  If a program expects files to keep all their bits, it's 
supposed to say so by activating binary mode.  Failure to do so is, at 
least technically, a bug.

> What will happen if actually binary files are opened for 
> reading?  

If the program explicitly used binary mode, they'll be opened as binary,
regardless of the mount option.

 > Will a \r\n sequence cut down to \n or how is the mode then
> detected?

It's not supposed to be necessary to "detect" the mode --- the program 
opening the file is supposed to know what it's doing, and tell the OS.

In other words: programs can fail to work in a text-mode mounted system 
--- but if they do, that's clearly the programs' fault.  Binary mode 
mounts are essentially a way to deliberately break the OS to make it 
compatible with broken programs.