From: jra@axon.cygnus.com (Jeremy Allison) Subject: Re: ITIMER Implementation??? 4 Dec 1996 12:33:30 -0800 Sender: daemon@cygnus.com Approved: cygnus.gnu-win32@cygnus.com Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: <199612041954.LAA06070.cygnus.gnu-win32@cygnus.com> Original-To: Alessandro Forin Original-cc: "'Jeremy Allison'" , "'Colin Peters'" , "'GNU-Win32'" In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 04 Dec 1996 10:45:56 PST." Original-Sender: owner-gnu-win32@cygnus.com Alessandro, You make some very interesting points. The problem though is that Cygwin32 is meant to compile existing UNIX code. I know signals are a poor substitute for about 4 different things, my goal is for people not to have to change their code. Using threads for ITIMERS would only work if the original code wanted a timer facility that didn't interrupt I/O in progress. Without knowing what the original request was using ITIMERS for I have to code for the general case which is interrupting I/O with a signal when the timer fires. If they have to re-write they might as well just move to the Win32 api. The really interesting task would be to get a description of the 'real' NT API, not the Win32 overlay, I mean the one that executables flagged as 'NT Native' use. I believe that there may be calls in there that would enable a much better POSIX emulation (as this is the API that the NT POSIX subsystem is based on). However I doubt that Microsoft would be willing to document it for us (although I believe you have done so for the 'OpenNT' company in San Francisco). I would love for you to prove me wrong however :-). Cheers, Jeremy. jra@cygnus.com - For help on using this list, send a message to "gnu-win32-request@cygnus.com" with one line of text: "help".