[FAQ] gnuwin32 mini FAQ and resource pointer
Michael Weiser
michael@weiser.saale-net.de
Sun Jan 31 23:52:00 GMT 1999
gnuwin32 mini FAQ and resource pointer
$Id: gnuwin32-mini-faq.txt,v 1.15 1999/01/15 02:10:00 michael Exp $
Contents:
0. Introduction
1. Cygwin
1.1. Cygwin most frequently asked questions
1.1.1. Binary mounts
1.1.2. Long pauses occuring randomly in bash
1.1.3. Windows 95 freezing up
1.1.4. Options for the CYGWIN environment variable
1.2. Cygwin resources
1.2.1. Web sites
1.2.2. FTP archives
2. Mingw32
2.1. Mingw32 resources
2.1.1. Web sites
2.1.2. FTP archives
3. FTP Upload
4. Acknowledgements
5. Legal stuff
0. Introduction
This document tries to answer the gnuwin32 mailing list's most
frequently asked questions. It is not intended to replace any other
document you should have read before mailing a question to the list
but tries to give a comprehensive list of such resources. It also
tries to collect all related, interesting and up-to-date download
locations.
0.1. News
- support for B19 dropped since B20.1 seems to be stable now
- some new pointers
- some expired and dead ones removed
- revised section 1.1.1. (Binary mounts)
1. Cygwin
Before doing anything else you should make sure that you have
updated your Cygwin package with the latest patches and enhancements,
even and especially if you just downloaded and installed it:
- Sergey Okhapkin's coolview package contains an updated Cygwin DLL
that reflects the latest developments and fixes a lot of known
problems.
- Mumit Khan's compilation of egcs-1.1.1 for Cygwin fixes some
problems with the tools that come with the environment, especially
if you're using the C++ compiler. This is a drop-in replacement for
the gcc toolset.
URL's are listed below.
1.1. Cygwin most frequently asked questions
If your problem doesn't go away after the above mentioned updates,
perhaps the following helps solving it:
1.1.1. Binary mounts
The Issue
*********
Under Unix when an application reads from a file it gets exactly what's in
the file on disk and the converse holds on writing. The situation is
different in the DOS/Windows world where a file can be opened in one of two
modes, BINARY and TEXT. In the BINARY mode the system behaves exactly as in
Unix. However in TEXT mode there are major differences:
a) On writing in TEXT mode, a NL (\n,^J) is transformed into the sequence CR
(\r,^M) NL..
b) On reading in TEXT mode, a CR followed by an NL is deleted and a ^Z
character signals the end of file.
This can break havoc with seek/fseek since the number of bytes actually in
the file may differ from that seen by the application.
The mode can be specified explicitly as explained in the Programming section
below. In an ideal DOS/Windows world, all programs using lines as records
(such as bash, make, sed ...) would open files (and change the mode of their
standard input and output) as TEXT and all other programs (such as cat, cmp,
tr ...) would use BINARY. In practice in the Cygwin world, only programs
that deal explicitly with object files specify the mode as BINARY (this is
the case of "od", which is helpful to diagnose CR problems). All others use
the default.
The default Cygwin behavior
***************************
The Cygwin b20.1 system gives us some flexibility in deciding how files are to
be opened when the mode is not specified explicitly:
a) If the file appears to reside on a file system that is mounted (i.e. if
its pathname starts with a directory displayed by "mount") then the
default is specified by the mount flags.
b) If the file appears to reside on a file system that is not mounted (as
can happen when the path contains a drive letter), the default mode is TEXT,
except if the CYGWIN environment variable contains "binmode".
c) Pipes are always opened in binary mode.
d) When a program is launched by a Cygwin or DOS shell, its standard input,
output and error are in BINARY mode if CYGWIN contains "tty", else in TEXT
mode, except if they are piped or redirected. When redirecting, the Cygwin
f CYGWIN is that at the time
the shell was launched and not that at the time the program is executed.
The DOS shell always pipes and redirects with BINARY mode.
What to do
**********
If you work in a Dos/Windows world, setting the mounts and CYGWIN to TEXT
mode makes sense. This will avoid seeing unexpected CRs in shell scripts and
Makefiles . Unfortunately you will have other problems. Firstly, the
Dos/Windows world is not ideal under Cygwin, e.g. "cat" will not work with
binary files ( input will stop at ^Z, CR will be introduced in the output,
etc... ). Secondly, you will introduce CR in files you write, which causes
problems when moving them to Unix.
If you move files back and forth to a Unix system or share a disk
with one, use BINARY mode. Make sure to remove CRs from all Makefiles and
shell scripts.
Example
*******
The following script deletes CRs from files:
#!/bin/sh
# Remove \r from the files given as arguments
for file in "$@"
do
CYGWIN=binmode sh -c "tr -d \\\"\\\r\\\" < '$file' > c:tmpfile.tmp"
if [ "$?" = "0" ]
then
rm "$file"
mv c:tmpfile.tmp "$file"
fi
done
This works irrespective of the mount because rule b) applies for the path
c:tmpfile.tmp. According to rule d) CYGWIN must be set before invoking the
shell. Those precautions are necessary because "tr" does not setmode its
standard output to BINARY. It would thus reintroduce \r when writing to a
file on a TEXT mounted file system. The desired behavior can also be
obtained by using "tr -d \r" in a .bat file.
Programming
***********
In the open() function call, BINARY mode can be specified with O_BINARY and
TEXT mode with O_TEXT. These symbols are defined in <fcntl.h>.
In the fopen() function call, BINARY mode can be specified by adding a "b"
to the mode string; there is no direct way to specify TEXT mode. The mode
of a file can be changed by the call setmode(fd,mode) where fd is a file
descriptor (an integer) and mode is O_BINARY or O_TEXT. The function returns
O_BINARY or O_TEXT depending on the mode before the call, and EOF on error.
1.1.2. Long pauses occuring randomly in bash
Should be fixed as of B20 and greater.
1.1.3. Windows 95 Freezing Up (and related problems)
(Is anyone's Windows 95/98 out there still freezing with B20.1?
Please give me some feedback since I'll remove that paragraph
otherwise.)
Symptoms to be treated
Trying to stop a program (e.g. by ctrl-C) hangs up W95
Errors in typing in a command often hang up W95
bash.exe won't work in the role of /bin/sh.exe
can't lstat or find files involving a specified drive
Steps to take
Install USB support
Use better version of cygwinb19.dll
Use disk data/directory/registry maintenance software
replace /bin/sh.exe with a copy of bash.exe
USB
The "Universal Serial Bus" scheme not only supports a scheme of
installation which is preferred for many devices, often including
video and sound cards. It also includes a more workable scheme for
trapping program faults. While USB support is integral to W98, it is
an optional patch for W95 which is to be added to the standard
installation. After installation, USB appears in the list of
removable software under the Settings/Control Panel/Add/Remove
Programs. It must be removed while performing OS repairs.
OSR2 versions of Windows 95 include an optional usb patch on the
CD, in \other\updates\usb. Instructions are in a README file there.
This is a 2-step process involving yet another reboot. For earlier
versions of W95, there are hot fix patches which may be found by
checking the leads in the gnuwin32/Cygwin FAQ.
cygwinb19.dll
The B19.1 version of cygwinb19.dll is better than the original, and
the Okhapkin version from http://www.lexa.ru is better yet. lexa.ru
is quite difficult to connect properly here on the other side of the
world; the best time probably is around 7 am Sunday morning in Russia.
running; just use
a plain DOS window or My Computer to copy the new one over the old,
after which you can open a bash window again.
Disk data maintenance
gnu-win32 increases the importance of standard measures to keep
registry and directory structures clean, and disk data well organized.
bash
Many users of NT have recommended dispensing with the ash shell
which is installed in the Cygwin /bin/sh.exe. This is not
recommended under W95 until you have installed USB.
Undo whatever you have done with /bin (blow it away). The
following works after USB is installed:
cd /
mkdir bin
cd bin
cp $CYGFS/H-i386-cygwin32/bin/bash.exe sh.exe
If you like, you can build bash-2.02 from source, or install
Okhapkin's souped up version of it.
1.1.4. Options for the CYGWIN environment variable
The following parameters to Cygwin's CYGWIN environment variable
may be used to affect its behaviour.
There has been a bug in B20 on handling the CYGWIN parameters which
made it neccessary to add two spaces before the first parameter like
'CYGWIN= tty binmode'. This has been fixed with Sergey Okhapkin's
latest coolview and B20.1.
[no]title - [do not] display command line of currently running
process in console title. (default: disabled)
[no]strip_title - [do not] strip the path spec from what is displayed
in the console title bar when the program is run.
This works in conjunction with 'title'.
(default: disabled)
[no]tty - [do not] make consoles more UN*X-like to improve
compatibility with UN*X apps. This may cause
problems with non-Cygwin apps. (default: disabled)
[no]binmode - [do not] use 'binmode' as the default open mode when
the mode is not otherwise specified in the open or
by mount. This espacially applies to path specs like
//c//foo. (default: disabled)
[no]glob - [do not] perform globbing operations on the command
line when a Cygwin process is being invoked from a
non-Cygwin shell. (default: enabled)
[no]ntea - [do not] use extended file attributes on Windows NT.
(default: disabled)
strace - a cygwin1.dll debugging aid. Setting mask to '1'
will cause reams of information about the operation
of Cygwin to be written to 'file' as Cygwin
operates. The rest of the bits control the display
various Cygwin subsystems. For a complete list check
out /usr/include/sys/strace.h. The cache setting
controls how much strace output will be held in
memory before being output to disk. (default:
disabled)
This option is provied by Sergey's coolviews only:
[no]mixed - [do not] create case-sensitive filenames on NTFS
partitions. (default: disabled)
Please check
http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/cygwin-ug-net/setup-env.html for
the latest happenings.
1.2. Cygwin resources
If the above doesn't answer your question you should read the
Cygwin FAQ at http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/faq_toc.html before
posting any question to the list.
Please also research your question via the Searchable Mail Archives
at http://www.cygnus.com/ml/gnu-win32 . Most problems have already been
discussed and solved on the list.
If you are searching for a port of a specific program or further
information on a certain topic, you should check out the following
Cygwin related sites:
1.2.1. Web sites
http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/ (project page)
http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/faq_toc.html (Cygwin FAQ)
http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/cygwin-ug-net/cygwin-ug-net.html
(Cygwin User's Guide)
http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/cygwin-api/cygwin-api.html
(Cygwin API Reference)
http://www.cygnus.com/ml/gnu-win32 (searchable mailing list archive)
http://www.eGroups.com/list/gnu-win32/ (mailing list archive mirror)
http://www.cygnus.com/pubs/gnupro/ (comercial page)
http://aquarius.franken.de/docs/develop/gnuwin32/GNUWin32.txt
(Michael Hirmke - package porting notes)
http://dao.gsfc.nasa.gov/software/grads/win32/X11R6.3/
(Arlindo da Silva - X11R6.3 binaries for B19)
http://www-public.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de/~tolj/
(Cygwin Porting Project - ports)
http://www.alank.net/ (GNU-Win32 Bash Configuration)
http://www.askesis.nl/AskesisPostgresIndex.html (Askesis - PostgreSQL)
http://www.dol.ru/users/valtul/ (Valery Tulnikov - ports)
http://www.freeyellow.com/members5/gw32/
(Earnie Boyd - resource pointer)
http://www.i21.com/~tjump/files/ (Theodore Jump - Emacs functions)
http://www.io.com/~bub/rxvt.html (rxvt that doesn't need an X server)
http://www.itribe.net/virtunix/ (more tools and man pages)
http://www.kedemel.demon.co.uk/ (Darren - ports)
http://www.lexa.ru/sos (Sergey Okhapkin - updates and ports)
http://www.multione.capgemini.fr/tools/pack_ipc/
(Ludovic Lange - ipc package)
http://www.xemacs.freeserve.co.uk/ (Andy Piper - ports)
http://www.tiac.net/users/cgf/ (Christopher Faylor - ports)
http://www.xraylith.wisc.edu/~khan/software/gnu-win32/
(Mumit Khan - updates and ports)
1.2.2. FTP archives
ftp://go.cygnus.com/pub/sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin (Cygwin FTP site)
ftp://dao.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/uwm_coads/X11R6.3
(Arlindo da Silva - X11R6.3 binaries)
ftp://ftp.cs.nyu.edu/pub/local/fox/cygwin32
ftp://pipeline.ucsd.edu/pub/dsf/cygwin32
(David Fox - RPM port and packages)
ftp://ftp.franken.de/pub/win32/develop/gnuwin32/cygwin32/
(Michael Hirmke - German mirror and ports collection)
ftp://www.lexa.ru/pub/domestic/sos/
(Sergey Okhapkin - fixes and ports)
ftp://ftp.parallax.co.uk/pub/andyp (Andy Piper - fixes and ports)
ftp://ftp.xraylith.wisc.edu/pub/khan/gnu-win32/cygwin32/
(Mumit Khan - egcs binaries)
2. Mingw32
2.1. Mingw32 resources
2.1.1. Web sites
http://agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de/~janjaap/mingw32/
(Jan Jaap van der Heijden - gcc binaries)
http://www.freeyellow.com/members5/gw32/
(Earnie Boyd - resource pointer)
http://www.fu.is.saga-u.ac.jp/~colin/gcc.html
(Colin Peters - project page)
http://www.xraylith.wisc.edu/~khan/software/gnu-win32/
(Mumit Khan - updates and ports)
2.1.2. FTP archives
ftp://agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de/home/janjaap/mingw32
(Jan Jaap van der Heijden - gcc binaries)
ftp://ftp.franken.de/pub/win32/develop/gnuwin32/mingw32/
(Michael Hirmke - German mirror and ports collection)
ftp://ftp.xraylith.wisc.edu/pub/khan/gnu-win32/mingw32/
(Mumit Khan - egcs binaries)
3. FTP Upload
Thanks to Michael Hirmke it is possible to host your port at the
German gnuwin32 mirror ftp.franken.de. If you upload a port, Michael
will create a seperate directory for your package and also include
it in his package report.
The report gives the following instructions on uploading:
*How to upload to German GNUWIN32 site*
-------------------------------------
- how to upload to our German GNUWIN32 site:
site: ftp.franken.de
user: ftp/anonymous
password: <email address>
To get directly to the GNUWIN32 upload/incoming directory type
"cd gnuwin32:" (note the colon following "gnuwin32") and then
"cd incoming"
Please always add a short readme on what you've uploaded.
I'd like best, if the description would follow this format:
----------------------< snip snip snip >-------------------------
*<package name>*
--------------
- what is it?
- <short package description>
- system
- <system type, i.e. Windows NT4, Windows 95, ...>
- preliminaries
- <which arrangements to make>
- configure
- <which changes and parameters are necessary for configure>
- make
- <which changes and parameters are necessary for make>
- make install
- <which changes and parameters are necessary for make install>
- notes
- <what else might be interesting to know>
- package availability
- on <site name>
- in <path>
- as <package name>
- contributed by
- <email address> (<your name>)
----------------------< snip snip snip >-------------------------
There is no need to tell me, that you have uploaded something,
because I'll get informed automatically.
Please note:
*I will delete anything, which does not look like a useful*
*GNUWIN32 package !*
*So please don't upload any warez, spam or similar garbage !*
4. Acknowledgements
Special thanks go to Earnie Boyd who kindly gave me his signature to
create an FAQ out of it and contributed many great ideas. Also I want
to thank Christopher Faylor, Michael Hirmke, Pierre Humblet, Goeffrey
Noer, Timothy Prince and Sergey Okhapkin, who allowed me to include
their huge knowledge on Cygwin in this document. And of course I want
to thank all the developers at Cygnus and all over the net for
developing such a great environment.
5. Legal stuff
I disclaim everything. :)
Copyright (c) 1998 by Michael Weiser, all rights reserved.
# end of file
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