> From: Spiro Trikaliotis
>
> Hello David,
>
> * On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 05:42:20PM -0900 David Abrahams wrote:
> >
> > Can anyone explain why the installer began recommending using *nix
> > line ending conventions? DOS-compatible endings have
> always "just worked"
> > for me and I've heard of lots of problems doing it the
> now-recommended
> > way.
>
> Personally, I also install it with CR/LF line endings.
>
Me too, and like you and the OP report, it "just works" 99.44% of the time.
Of course, since it's not the 21st century yet, many Unixoid programs are
still unable to handle text files properly, hence the remaining 0.66%.
> However, I noticed one problem this way: xfonts. If you
> install xfonts on cygwin with CR/LF line endings, the fonts
> end up corrupt, and you cannot start X. I was bitten by this
> problems many times, whenever I installed a fresh Cygwin.
>
> To fix this,
^^^^^^^^
You mean "work around this broken software". Presumably this will be
"fixed" sometime in the 21st century, whenever that starts.
> I use the following way: I mount /var/cache
> (which also has
> /var/cache/fonts/) in binmode, and reinstall xfonts.
>
> This is a long-running problem.
>
Indeed, but hardly surprising, since all indications are that handling text
files is an NP-Hard problem.
> Another problem I once had, but which might have been fixed
> in the meantime, was the gcc compiler for the Lego
> mindstorms: It did not accept sources files with DOS line
> endings. Note, however, that this was 2000 or 2001, so it
> might have changed in the meantime.
>
Gcc was broken for a while, but that did in fact get properly fixed quite a
while ago.
> Oh, and Subversion is problematic, too. Because the SVN
> developers decided to handle line endings on their own using
> libapr, opening files in binary mode and reading and writing
> CR, LF or CR/LF on their own,
This is the right way to do things...
> on Cygwin, SVN is hard-coded to
> *nix line endings. This is not nice. Note that this approach
> will also fail badly if you mount parts of your system in
> textmode, and parts in binmode.
>
> Because of this, I am using an SVN version which I compiled
> myself with a patched libapr.
>
...I'm not following this. Are you talking about the SVN repository, or the
clients, or...? What's the issue? I know CVS had some problems with the
dreaded \n/\r\n issue back in the day, but I wasn't aware of similar
Subversion issues.
>
> Other than that, I never had any problems with the CR/LF line endings.
Bash has some known problems in this area, but there's a Cygwin-specific fix
(that unfortunately is off by default) which hopefully will get accepted
upstream sometime in the next century.
> However, the rationale might be that most problems are
> testing better with LF line endings, as they come from the
> *nix world. Remember, on *nix systems, the difference between
> opening a file in text- or in binmode is practically
> non-existant. Thus, many programmers do not care about the
> "right" mode.
>
Well, better stated, they assume they can treat all files - text,
executables, jpegs, whatever - as if they were Unix-formatted text files.
Of course, they're not, hence problems ensue.
> Best regards,
> Spiro.
--
Gary R. Van Sickle
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