Re: Make CVS HEAD version build out of the box

[Yongwei Wu]

On 02/10/2007, Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Or, what now is a practical case where a gmake with that
> > hack works better than one without?
>
> I don't know how to come up with an example that shows this problem.
> But we don't need a specific example to know that this is a problem
> that needs to be taken care of.  Good engineering does not need an
> example for each potential problem in order to prevent them.  As long
> as we cannot prove that the argument will _never_ have a trailing
> slash, we need to protect against that.

Can we make sure all arguments passed to find_directory on Windows
do not contain a "/" or "\" at the end?  I cannot find any example
either.  And I have tested that neither DIR\\ or DIR/ can match an
existing directory DIR currently---removing the trailing slash is OK.

The code was added by Paul in 1999 (very long ago).  What was the
exact case then?  Is the reason still valid?

[snipped]

> That's because `mkdir' that got invoked is the built-in command of the
> Windows shell, and that built-in command thinks a forward slash begins
> an option.  Try quoting the directory name, like this:
>
>    mkdir "dir/"
>
> then I think it will work, because the slashes inside quotes aren't
> interpreted by the Windows shell.

Yes, this is true.

> > So, there is still the question: when is the backslash trick in
> > find_directory supposed to help, actually?
>
> Whenever the argument has a trailing slash.

As I said above, we have no real case here.

-- 
Wu Yongwei
URL: http://wyw.dcweb.cn/