Date:	Wed, 11 Feb 1998 12:01:06 +0200 (IST)
From:	Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To:	Nate Eldredge <eldredge AT ap DOT net>
cc:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com, demmer AT LSTM DOT Ruhr-UNI-Bochum DOT De, nedu AT ee DOT washington DOT edu,
	mert0407 AT sable DOT ox DOT ac DOT uk
Subject:	Re: Suggestion: Portability section for libc docs
In-Reply-To:	<199802110533.VAA06002@adit.ap.net>
Message-ID:	<Pine.SUN.3.91.980211115256.15677H-100000@is>
MIME-Version:	1.0

On Tue, 10 Feb 1998, Nate Eldredge wrote:

> This is a good idea; however it requires that we look at all the other DOS
> compilers.

In principle, yes.  But in practice, all of the ``other'' DOS compilers 
mimic what Microsft C does (that's what their notion of portability is).  
So if you have seen one, you've seen them all.

> This is a bit of a dilemma. It does seem out of place to describe other
> platforms in DJGPP documentation. Also, actually finding all these
> differences is a nightmare.

This is easy: what we don't find, won't be described.  I submit that we 
will wind up only mentioning differences which people remember because 
they had to debug subtle problems.  And that is all I suggested.

> Otherwise, we end up saying things like "Watcom's `stat' doesn't fill in the
> `st_link' field" ad nauseum,

Why ad nauseum?  It will only be mentioned in the docs for `stat' and 
`fstat'.

> Like for `fork', it would IMHO not be inappropriate to
> say, "On Unix systems, this function actually works". How does that sound?

This is already in the docs (in reverse: it says that in DJGPP it does 
NOT work).

> I believe Linux is a fairly good
> mix of the characteristics of various Unices, If someone has information
> about a specific system, that would of course be helpful.

Actually, I think Linux is not such a good representative at all.  It is 
only a Unix work-alike, and it tends to the SysV family.  The other large 
family is BSD, which is very different from Linux, AFAIK.

> One other question: Would it be better to move this discussion/project to
> `djgpp-workers'?

IMHO, yes.

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