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Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 23:29:36 -0400
From: Christopher Faylor <cgf AT redhat DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: 1.1.8: Too large entry in termcap file
Message-ID: <20010616232936.A29175@redhat.com>
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References: <3B2BDA9C DOT 4E46A3D AT tuwien DOT ac DOT at>
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In-Reply-To: <3B2BDA9C.4E46A3D@tuwien.ac.at>; from Alois.Steindl+e325@tuwien.ac.at on Sun, Jun 17, 2001 at 12:15:56AM +0200

On Sun, Jun 17, 2001 at 12:15:56AM +0200, Alois Steindl wrote:
>Hello,
>the entries for terminals "cygwin" and "linux" in /etc/termcap seem to
>be larger than 1024 bytes.  compile the following program with the
>command line
>	gcc -o tgettest.exe tgettest.c -ltermcap
>and run it with 
>	tgettest linux
>You will see that the length of the returned Buffer is larger than 1024
>bytes.  In the second call a different Buffer (Buffer2) gets
>overwritten.

Looking at the entry that is in termcap for linux, I don't see any way
around this.  I did compare it against the entry from Red Hat and I see
that they just squeak in under 1024.

I compared the two and obviously the Cygwin version does have more "stuff"
but I don't think that any of it is obviously wrong.  So, the trivial
fix for this is to increase the size of your buffer.  I suspect that this
is what most applications who use termcap had already done years ago.

The other solution is to use ncurses, which doesn't have this limitation.

Or, if you want to submit a patch, I'll consider it.

>A personal remark:
>Since according to the ChangeLog file for termcap I concluded that
>Christopher Faylor is maintaining termcap, I CCed him my second message
>and obtained a quite insulting response.

You sent me personal email.  I sent you a polite note asking you to
use the cygwin mailing list and forwarding your email to the cygwin
mailing list.  Then you sent the email to me personally *again*.

Apparently my rude response got your attention.  I apologize if it upset
you.  However, imagine how frustrating it must be for me and any of the
regular contributors here.  We receive a lot of personal email despite
the fact that we advertise the fact that we don't want personal email.

You are relatively unique in being one of the few people who didn't get
the "hint".  Apparently it has now sunk in.  Thank you for not sending
this to me personally a third time.

>I have spent several hours to locate this bug and wouldn't have
>expected that kind of response even from Bill Gates himself, who thinks
>that there are no errors in his programs and all problems are caused by
>silly users.

Huh.  Maybe if I was more insulting I'd be a little richer.  I'll have
to remember that.

>Certainly I wouldn't expect this answer from any contributor to Open
>Source! Usually the program maintainers prefer to have errors reported
>directly to them and not to the public, so they can react promptly.  In
>fact, this is the first insulting response from this direction.

Sorry, no.  The whole point of mailing lists like cygwin, gdb, gcc,
linux-kernel, etc.  is for people to communicate with each other about
problems.  I work at Red Hat.  We're an open source company.  I work
with *a lot* of free software developers.  I am not aware of any of them
who desires personal email regarding their project when there is an
existing project mailing list.  In fact, it is company policy that
discussions should be carried out in public.

cgf

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