RE: [Gcl-devel] Re: delayed pathname.d patch

[Bill Page]

On Thursday, April 22, 2004 5:48 PM Mike Thomas wrote
> 
> Whether this patch is really the cause or it has just 
> triggered the strange path behaviour seen in the Maxima
> build I don't know, but the build now fails trying to
> compile pcl/pcl_pkg.lsp because the C compiler is fed a
> path with no device (C:) as follows:
> 

In case you might sometimes get the feeling that no one
else is watching your continuing dialogue with Camm towards
the next GCL release,  I thought I would just say that I
for one, find the detailed online "debugging by email"
quite interesting (but challenging) reading. However I am
gradually learning more about GCL. Thanks.

When you mentioned that you are seeing paths without the
C: prefix in Windows, it reminded me that this was one of
the things I struggled with while trying to get Axiom
running on Windows. I came to the conclusion that there
are several places - in Axiom at least - where file names
are passed as symbols instead of strings. This seems to
mean that sometimes the C: is misinterpreted as something
like a (package?) name and not part of the file name or
path. I don't know if this is the what is happening in
this particular case, but it seems to be a general issue
in windows that the C: syntax of file names precludes the
use of symbols. Does this make sense?

Regards,
Bill Page.