RE: Patch for Build under MSW + MSYS2

[Roland Winkler]

On Sat Feb 3 2018 Vincent Belaïche wrote:
> The patch computes the absolute path in a shell variable named
> abs_target in order to use maybe the cygpath -w command and get the real
> path. Automake CYGPATH_W expands to cygpath -w on MSWindows, and to echo
> otherwise.

What is the reason to call cygpath?  What problem does this solve?
I know little to nothing about cygwin.

> The patch could be simpler if you consider that there aren't going to be
> any directory name in the absolute path containing a single quote, a
> double quote or a backslash (cygpath outputs forward slashes as filename
> separator). Although single quotes, double quotes and backslash are
> allowed filename characters under *nixy shells, autotools check for that
> and prevent building with such a dir name within root directory. So all
> the complication for handling ' " and \ is just overkill in this
> case. However, the reason why I opted out to writing it this way, is
> that I think that it is good to have some reference code for handling
> absolute paths in any cases of bash ports, so this code could be reused
> in another context than autotools as a reference bulletproof coding.

I am not sure bbdb should take a lead here to provide solutions to
such rather exotic problems.  I am tempted to say: if someone really
wants to put quotes into filenames be prepared for trouble.  I see
little point in trying to be smarter than autotools.

If you want to provide a reference showing that such things *can* be
done, it seems to me there must be better, more prominent places
than bbdb.

Roland