> From: Paul Smith <psm...@gnu.org> > Cc: egg...@cs.ucla.edu, bug-gnulib@gnu.org > Date: Wed, 16 May 2018 12:53:22 -0400 > > On Wed, 2018-05-16 at 19:33 +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote: > > > these values. Or else I have to create per-system instances of > > > each of these files, of which I already have 5 just for alloca and > > > getloadavg and if I do take on glob/fnmatch that number will > > > balloon. > > > > For the record: what are those 5 systems? MS-Windows is one, but > > what are the others? > > Sorry for not being clear: I meant 5 replacement header files that > contain @-tokens, not 5 supported target systems.
Ah, thanks for clarifications. > The systems we ostensibly support are POSIX/UNIX, Windows, VMS, MS-DOS > (?), and AmigaOS (?). MS-DOS has glob and fnmatch in its library, so it probably doesn't need those from Gnulib. > I don't know if anyone actually uses either of the two latter > platforms anymore, but the last time I asked about ditching Amiga > support (for example) there were people who objected. That was some > years ago now though. "MS-DOS" is a misnomer in this case: it really means the DJGPP tools (www.delorie.com/djgpp). And yes, that is still used, albeit by a very small group of people. In particular, I use the DJGPP port of GNU Make (and other DJGPP ports of GNU software) to build the "MS-DOS" port of Emacs. > I've never been entirely clear on the difference between the DOS and > Windows ports. They target 2 different operating systems. Because Windows versions up to XP included either DOS itself or its good emulation, executables that needed DOS services could run on Windows, and I believe that is the source of your confusion. But since modern versions of Windows are 64-bit, they no longer support running MS-DOS executables, and the quality of MS-DOS subsystems on 32-bit versions of modern Windows systems consistently deteriorates, so soon one will need a true DOS system or a true emulator to run those.
