Date: Fri, 13 Jan 1995 12:51:37 +0900
From: Stephen Turnbull <turnbull AT shako DOT sk DOT tsukuba DOT ac DOT jp>
To: 1CMC3466 AT ibm DOT MtSAC DOT edu
Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject: V2.0 suggestion

	From time to time the topic of "how do I re-direct stderr?"
   pops up and mainly has to with re-directing compile error messages. 
   The solution to this is: [...stuff deleted...] a very small but
   useful utility that can be added to DJGPP 2.0 or even any unforseen
   future 1.12 maintenance releases. The payoff of this would be
   preventing this type of question from being a FAQ

   -CmC

[flicking my Bic]
Reductio ad absurdum: There are lots of small but useful utilities
that could be added to DJGPP to head off FAQs.  For example, GNU Emacs
comes immediately to mind so that we won't have to deal with "what's a
good programmer's editor?"

The program you have in mind is called REDIRECT, and it's available on
SimTel and everywhere else.  A better alternative IMHO is to use 4DOS
as the command processor.  In either case, if it's been invented
already, use it, don't reinvent it.

In any case, all FAQs will remain FAQs until somebody invents
documentation that leaps off the disk and grabs the newbie luser by
the throat and doesn't let go until the luser passes a multiple choice
exam with 80% comprehension or better.  How many times do we see
"subscribe" messages to the list?
[flame off]

To the substance of your (basically excellent, but incompatible with
the mission of DJGPP) suggestion:

Anton Helm has actually put together a "for the compleat newbie" DJGPP
package on three (!! less than a handful of fingers!!) 1.44MB disks.
He cannot publish it, however, because he can't afford the disk space
for sources.  I intend to do this myself in the near future.  Among
other things, the Helm package includes:  a completely defaulted
install.bat that works as long as you don't already have a c:\djgpp
directory; REDIRECT; ndmake (Tony's personal preference); QEdit (a
public domain, fairly small, programmer's editor), and of course the
GCC compiler suite.  Two optional disks add GDB and Objective-C.

However, this is *not* the mission of DJGPP qua DJGPP---it's for
somebody else to do.  If you have a list of such "small but useful"
utilities, I'd be glad to see if they can be fit into Tony's
packaging.  Or if you want to construct your own EZ-GNU package and
maintain it, I'll be happy to archive a few MB of GIFs and put it on
my server.  It might even be possible to put such on SimTel (a la the
various and sundry Linux distributions).

    --Steve <turnbull AT shako DOT sk DOT tsukuba DOT ac DOT jp>