Can't get binutils to build on Cygwin

[Nick Clifton]

Hi,

> Thanks for the help and suggestions so far.  I've tracked down the problem
> to being an incompatibility between 'configure' in binutils 2.17, and sed
> 4.1.5, which Cygwin is currently distributing.  If I regress to sed 4.1.4,
> it works ok.

> The question is: sed bug or configure bug?

Neither, it is a filesystem problem.  I asked a Cygwin expert with 
familiarity with SED about the problem and she said:

: This is a line-ending problem.  The older SED binary does automatic
: conversion from CR/LF to LF lineendings, thus breaking binary input.

[Note - SED *is* used for editing binary files, hence it is necessary 
that it does not break binary input].

: The newer SED does not do this automatic conversion and treats the
: input as binary input.  CR/LF lineendings on input are thus treated
: as lines with LF lineendings and having a CR as last character on the
: line, same as on other POSIX systems.  The problem here is apparently
: that the input is in DOS CR/LF format.  It should be converted to LF
: lineendings before using it.

So either you can stick with the older version of SED, (after all if it
works for you then why change ?), or else you can use the newer version
of SED and the "tr" command or your favorite editor to fix up the input 
files that are causing the problems and replace CR/LF with LF.

Cheers
   Nick