[Gcl-devel] Re: [Axiom-developer] Re: directory/truename transition

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

On Tue, 3 Jul 2007, Bill Page wrote:

| > As they are outside the spec, is there any reason not to implement
| > these where possible with #'system?  The bourne shell is likely at
| > least as portable as GCL is.  I was worried about the following
| > directory implementation:
| >
| >         sprintf(command, "shopt -s dotglob; "
| >                          "IFS='' j=\"%s\"; for i in $j ; do ! [ -e \"$i\" ]
| >                          || %c [ -d \"$i\" ] || echo \"$i\" ; done",
| >                          filename, ch);
| >
| > but I think it likely that this will even work on mingw.
| >
| 
| Well, that depends on what you mean by "work". At the present time gcl
| builds on MSYS/mingw as a *native* Windows application. MSYS/mingw is
| only required to build gcl from source. Standard native windows does
| not have any of these unix-oriented #system tools. Doing what you
| suggest would result in gcl only working from within the MSYS/mingw
| shell.

Note however that mingw/msys support for paths with embeeded space
is very limited -- this is not a suggestion that it should not be done 
in GCL; rather it is a warning about what is be assumed.

| Of course there is also the issue of gcc on Windows which is needed
| when compiling. In the case of installing a native Windows Axiom, the
| install program includes the bare minimum mingw gcc components in a
| separate directory along with Axiom. Installation of mingw is not a
| prerequisite.

The Haskell distribution for windows ships with a build of gcc.  
This is a general problem/nuisance on windows platforms for programs 
that generate C codes and assumes availability of a C compiler.

-- Gaby