Re: bug in texi2dvi, on Windows/Msys2 it cannot find tex

[Gavin Smith]

On Fri, Apr 08, 2022 at 04:30:12PM +0200, Tomas Kalibera wrote:
> I am not sure what is the correct name of it. I executed
> C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\msys.bat to get the shell.
> It uses : as path separator.
> 
> > Have you found that running texi2dvi fails in such an environment, with
> > my patch above?
> 
> Yes. It is because "uname" returns "MINGW32_NT-6.2".
> The original version works because "MSYSTEM=$OSTYPE uname" returns
> "msys_NT-6.2"
> 

I don't like the whole setting MSYSTEM via OSTYPE and then running uname
process; it's far too fiddly and hard to understand.  People like myself
have no idea what the MSYSTEM variable is supposed to be.

Instead, I propose checking OSTYPE directly for msys, where uname
doesn't give this information:

diff --git a/util/texi2dvi b/util/texi2dvi
index 1f42b41907..e5d0ffb4e2 100755
--- a/util/texi2dvi
+++ b/util/texi2dvi
@@ -80,12 +80,9 @@ IFS="$space$tab$newline"
 # directories in TEXINPUTS -- except for Cygwin and Msys, where COMSPEC
 # might be inherited, but : is used.
 
-# In the case of Msys, uname returns a value derived from MSYSTEM, as
-# MSYSTEM is user configurable, it is not so safe to use it to detect
-# Msys. It is safer to use OSTYPE, this is why we set MSYSTEM to
-# $OSTYPE before calling uname
 if test -n "$COMSPEC$ComSpec" \
-   && MSYSTEM=$OSTYPE uname | $EGREP -iv 'cygwin|msys' >/dev/null; then
+   && uname | $EGREP -iv 'cygwin|msys' >/dev/null
+   && test "$OSTYPE" != msys ; then
   path_sep=";"
 else
   path_sep=":"


How does that work?