Re: Some issues wrt compilation on Windows using VS.NET

[Tim Van Holder]

> As far as we know, Flex builds fine on Windows under Cygwin. What
> would compiling under .NET give us?

The ability to build on a windows box that doesn't have cygwin.  I'll
admit this is not a particularly great win.
Also the main portability issues here apply just as much to DJGPP.
I'll make sure the DJGPP maintainers know about these issues so they'll
look into them as well - I know they'll want to have a working flex 2.6
when it is released.

> I'll address the big points briefly now, so you don't waste your time
> on them:
> 
> > - filter.c assigns to stdin and stdout
> >   -> this is not possible on windows
> 
> Nor is it possible on  BSD, since the standard streams are not
> lvalues.  I intend to fix the problem by duplicating the pipes as
> fileno(stdin) and fileno(stdout).
> 
> 
> > This only leaves the main issue, the use of fork()/wait() in
> > filter.c (and wait() in main.c, but I assume the two are related).
> > At first glance it seems as it's all for that pipe, so I'll try to
> > make an alternate implementation using popen() (which IS supported
> > on DJGPP and Windows).
> 
> popen() won't help. Flex doesn't exec every time it forks. As I
> understand, pipe/fork/exec/wait are available everywhere except
> .NET...

As Hans-Bernhard says, the other victim will be DJGPP (and possibly
EMX on OS/2, but I don't know thatfor sure - I know it's less POSIXy
than Cygwin, but I'm not sure about whether or not it has fork & co).