Re: Status of Posix on Windows

On 29/05/2024 17:16, Kaz Kylheku wrote:

On 2024-05-29, Malcolm McLean <malcolm.arthur.mclean@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm currently using a Mac.
>
The recent discussion about the "embed" directive inspired me to find a
solution to the problem of embedding a directory in an ANSI C program,
of course without a modern compiler. You can see my proposal at
>
http://malcolmmclean.github.io/babyxrc/importingdirectories.html
>
(It's in the babyxrc documentation on github if this link doesn't work)
>
The program directorytoxml crawls a diectory and converts it to XML. And
it can't be written in ANSI C. It has to use Posix. The question is
whether this in in practise portable to Windows, or if I need to dust
off a Windows machine and write a Windows version using FindFirstFile
and FindNextFile.

 I use Cygwin for porting POSIX stuff to Windows. Cygwin moved to the
LGPL in 2016, which allows you to ship a program with its DLLs,
even if the program is proprietary.
 I forked the main Cygwin DLL in order to bring about "native Windows"
behaviors in a number of areas, resulting in a project called Cygnal.
This is referenced in my current Usenet signature.
 The downside of Cygwin is that it has slow file access. From following
discussions on the Cygwin mailing list, my understanding is that at
least some of it has to do with Cygwin having to make multiple accesses.
Like when you access a file foo, it has to check whether there is a
foo.lnk and foo.exe and such.
 

OK. So bottom line is no, I can't reasonably expect my millions of Windows Baby X programmer users to use directorytoxml. If utterly determined they can of curse make things work by messing abut with Cygwin. But the sirit of BabyX is tht everything is easy for the hobby programmer.
So eitber some nice person will volunteer, or I'll have to get a Windows machine. Work have kindly let me keep my work Apple Mac even though I've had to give up work due to ill health, but the Windows machine is at my own house which I don't live in any more (long story, and no it's not family disputes fortunately, except no-one accepts that my house is actually mine because my grandmother got it for free off Margaret Thatcher, and currently sister has designs on it whilst Dad is demented and needs me to live with him. So Windows machine not very accessible, and I'm too ill to drive).
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