Re: [Mingw-msys] coreutils-5.0

[Prof A O. (T. A. Chief) <chi...@bi...>]

On 25 Oct 2003 at 17:14, Earnie Boyd wrote:

> First let me state that I'm not particularly interested in extending
> MSYS to the point that I have to be involved with supporting someone's
> effort of using the libmsys-1.0.a import library.

I gathered that much last year ;). I fully understand and appreciate 
your position.

> That said, see below.
> 
> Prof A Olowofoyeku (The African Chief) wrote:
> > Hiya
> > 
> > I have just tried to build GNU coreutils-5.0 under msys (and succeeded
> > somewhat).
> > 
> > I only had to do minor stuff:
> > 
> > 1. The undefined _tzname problem occurred again (with strftime.c) - my
> > eventual solution was to manually add "#undef HAVE_TZNAME" to config.h
> > 
> 
> Probably a bug with MSYS or perhaps the method to find it.

I would have thought so. This problem has arisen in other contexts.

> > 2. There was some problem (when compiling du.c) with "UTILS_OPEN_MAX"
> > being defined in config.h as an internal error in open-max.m4. A
> > "grep" search in the MSYS include directory revealed this:
> > 
> > limits.h:#define _POSIX_OPEN_MAX                16
> > sys/unistd.h:#define _SC_OPEN_MAX                4
> > sys/unistd.h:#define _SC_MQ_OPEN_MAX            13
> > 
> > I have no idea what any of this is, but _POSIX_OPEN_MAX sounded like
> > the correct thing, so I manually defined UTILS_OPEN_MAX in config.h to
> > 16
> > 
> 
> Did you check the MSYS source to see if _POSIX_OPEN_MAX is used or if
> MSYS limits the number of opens?

No. What I did do was to run the configure script to build for both 
Cygwin and Mingw to see what the value of this would be. The configure 
script died at that point when configuring for Mingw, and the one for 
Cygwin gave the value of 3195. I checked the Win32 reference 
(win32.hlp) and found that there is no limit at all imposed by the OS 
(and the configure script accepts that there are OSES that do not 
impose a limit. In the event, I decided to stay with the Cygwin value - 
on the basis that MSYS and Cygwin share a lot in common. This value is 
only used in "du", and, from what I can see, "du" is working properly 
(even with the value of 16).

> > 3. There a problem with undefined reference to "crypt" when compiling
> > su.c. I eventually had to put a dummy crypt() function there ("su"
> > doesn't seem to make much sense under MSYS anyway, and "make install"
> > doesn't succeed in installing it, even though su.exe is there).
> > 
> 
> I would be surprised if it worked.  MSYS uses the older emulated passwd
> methods of Cygwin and I ain't about to change that.  I will consider
> extending the emulation but not to the point of using /etc/passwd and
> /etc/group files.
> 
> Does the Makefile use $(EXEEXT) in the install instructions for su?

Yes.

[...]
> If you're willing to maintain it and answer the questions, we can talk
> about it.  I'll ping you privately about some ideas.  If I forget,
> remind me, I'm recently busier than I've been for the past six years.

I am willing to maintain it and answer questions. But first, I must get 
it all working correctly.

Best regards, The Chief
--------
Prof. Abimbola A. Olowofoyeku (The African Chief) 
web:  http://www.bigfoot.com/~african_chief/