Re: make/tests issues

[J. Grant]

[I combined my reply to both of your emails]

> > When you (or anyone else on address@hidden) run the tests on
> > MS-Windows how do you avoid these LF discrepancy issues?
>
> I worked on the DJGPP port of GNU Make (see
> http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/), which runs on DOS and Windows systems.
> The Make test suite does work on both DOS and Windows using the DJGPP
> ports of Diff and other GNU software needed to run the tests (Perl,
> Bash, Fileutils, Sh-utils, etc.).
>
> The problem you described doesn't happen with the DJGPP port because
> the DJGPP port of GNU Diff ignores the CRLF/LF distinction unless it
> was given the --binary command-line switch.

So only DJGPP ignores the CRLF/LF distinction. diff v2.8.1 (from
GNU/Linux package diffutils-2.8.1-3mdk) differentiates the CRLF/LF line
endings the same as I experience on MSYS.

> > Using the w32 native build of make produces an exe which outputs in CRLF
> > format.  I ran the tests using MSYS/rxvt.  GNU diff v2.7 compares the
> > base file with the log and sees the difference.   I don't think there is
> > a way to turn off CRLF/LF distinction in GNU diff.
>
> What port of GNU Diff are you using?  That is, who or what project
> ported it to Windows?

I am using MSYS-1.0.8, which is a fork of an older version of cygwin I
believe.  Have you tried this?  (http://mingw.org/)

> In general, a Windows port of Diff should ignore the CRLF/LF
> distinction, unless it was invoked with the --binary command-line
> option.  That is because Diff uses text-mode I/O by default, which
> strips the CR characters from the CRLF pairs, therefore the files
> compare equal.  A ported Diff that doesn't behave like that is IMHO
> broken.

I do not think diff should ignore by default, but certainly it would be
helpful to have an option to ignore CRLF/LF differences.

So if diff process the way you prefer, when it ignores CRLF/LF
differences do you think the output patch should have the formating
forced to LF?  Otherwise new text may have CRLF in the patch, and the
original file might have been LF format.

Regards

JG