Message-ID: <000701c2220d$767b3360$61037d8a@L71021637>
From: "Rich Simoes" <rms_list2 AT hotmail DOT com>
To: <djgpp AT delorie DOT com>
Subject: Shells on DJGPP (a bit long)
Date: Tue, 2 Jul 2002 17:14:23 -0400
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Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com

This question is probably more about shells on DJGPP than anything else.

I work in an engineering environment and have been using UNIX for the last 
20 years on Sun and HP platforms. The last several years there has been a 
trend to move more and more applications to the PeeCee. Mostly Windows, 
but some Linux too. Because of this, I see a day coming where my UNIX 
environment will be gone. I have been hoping to find as much of my UNIX 
environment available on the PC as that is what I am comfortable with. I tend 
to work with engineering applications that require and generate data that need 
to be manipulated. GREP, SED, AWK, PERL, UNIX shell and C kind of 
make up my frequency used tools to do my job. A search for BASH on the 
Web has lead to my discovery of DJGPP, CYGWIN, and MINGW some 
6 months ago. I have monitored each mailing list and have dabbled with each 
of them a bit. I'm not really that interested in emulating UNIX as I am in having 
tools I'm familiar with available to me. The DJGPP ports seem to be close to 
what I had in mind. Sorry for the story of my life, but I thought a little back 
ground might be relevant to my questions about the shell I work in.

The BASH port does not work as I had hoped when it comes to a terminal 
window. On other platforms you get a terminal window. Might be an xterm 
or one that's provided with someone's CDE. A terminal window has characteristics 
that a user can customize such as size, color, memory, etc. When a terminal window 
is open, it usually runs a shell application. The shell uses much of the characteristic 
of the terminal window. Afterall, the shell is just an application running in the terminal 
window. On the PeeCee we have cmd.exe. Would this be analogous to a terminal 
window on UNIX? If so, is it possible to run a UNIX like shell such as BASH or 
anything else on the PeeCee window and have it use the characteristics of that window. 
I did some searching in the archives and what I found was that the current implementation 
of BASH on DJGPP kind of runs like a terminal and shell combined into one, but 
doesn't give me any control over the window. I see that everyone manages using a 
variety of techniques to have some way to look at output that may be too long or 
wide for the current BASH window. Of course I can go back to using cmd.exe 
and live with that "shell", but I'd rather have something I'm use to working with like
BASH.

Any suggestions? Is there something I've missed? I don't know how hard it is to port 
something like this myself to get the behavior I want as I've never undertaken 
something like this before. Even this old dog would be willing to try as long as 
it's not going to consume all my life for the next couple of years. I don't think
CYGWIN is the answer for me as there is more overhead with that setup than
I'm looking for. The file system I'm on means very little to me. It's the tools I
use that I'm looking for.

Gee, I hope this is relevant enough to post on this list. I appreciate any thoughts 
and feedback.

Rich