Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2000 10:47:51 +0200 (IST) From: Eli Zaretskii X-Sender: eliz AT is To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com Subject: Re: DJGPP and Win2K In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com Errors-To: nobody AT delorie DOT com X-Mailing-List: djgpp AT delorie DOT com X-Unsubscribes-To: listserv AT delorie DOT com Precedence: bulk On Mon, 17 Apr 2000, Damian Yerrick wrote: > What lets DJGPP.ENV-less systems run DJGPP programs? DJGPP.ENV is not required to run DJGPP programs. For example, Quake worked flawlessly on many systems that didn't have DJGPP.ENV. > Only the development toolchain really _requires_ DJGPP.ENV, right? *No* DJGPP program _requires_ DJGPP.ENV. Just rename that file and run your programs: they will work. If the startup code doesn't find DJGPP.ENV, it doesn't blow up. DJGPP.ENV is really an installation aid: it avoids the messy business to set up plethora of environment variables required to tell many ported packages where to find their auxiliary files. (These variables aren't needed on Unix/Linux, because there the places where those files live are hard-wired into the binary when it is compiled on the target machine.) DJGPP.ENV also makes sure the toolchain will work if you move the whole tree to another place on disk. If you remove DJGPP.ENV, some ported packages will stop working, but you can get them back into business by setting the appropriate variables in the environment. Other packages don't need DJGPP.ENV at all, so they will continue working even if you remove that file. GCC is the single exception from the above rule: it *refuses* to work if the DJGPP variable is not defined. But it does so not because it needs DJGPP.ENV, but because it has its own code to use the value of %DJGPP% in order to find its subprograms and support files.