Re: Compartmentalizing the 8.3 problem into the msdos directory

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sat, 05 Feb 2011 03:20:30 -0800
> From: Paul Eggert <address@hidden>
> CC: address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden
> 
> On 02/05/2011 02:59 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> >  . It will effectively block a release, until msdos/fnchange.prs is
> >    fixed.
> 
> We can easily give an option to override that, if necessary.

Then it _will_ be used, and the whole point is moot.

> >    . It needs to run on plain DOS, and so can only use features
> >      supported by the extremely primitive command.com shell available
> >      there.  For example, it cannot even recurse through arbitrary
> >      directory trees.
> 
> That can be handled in the same way that the file-renaming is handled:
> do the 'find' on Linux as part of the release process, distribute the
> output of 'find' as a file, and have the DOS build procedure read that file.

More complications for the release process.

> >    . Editing files generally changes their time stamps, which could
> >      then trigger Make rules not intended to run at end-user build
> >      time
> 
> If the DOS procedure edits files in the proper order, the resulting
> time stamps should be consistent with what 'make' expects.

I very much doubt that there exists a "proper order" that would
satisfy these requirements.  And even it does, finding it will be
non-trivial and error-prone.

> The remaining problems you mentioned seem to be largely theoretical.

Not if limitations on file names are lifted entirely.

> If they do happen, we can deal with those problems by hand, as they
> come up.

We do that now, and see where it got us.