Re: [PATCH] Unbuffer stdout and stderr on windows

Eli Zaretskii
2013-08-16T15:13:15Z

> Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 16:04:57 +0100
> From: Pedro Alves <palves@redhat.com>
> CC: gdb-patches@sourceware.org, brobecker@adacore.com, yao@codesourcery.com
>
> Ack. I can't say I really agree with this rationale. The problem
> exists, and hiding it under the rug won't make it go away. Actually
> forcing it to happen more frequently should make it easier to
> iron out all the kinks. IIUC, this is just a layer that
> splits input into whole lines before passing it up to higher
> levels, thus emulating line buffering. I'm failing to see why
> that is heuristic, rather than something that works 100% of the
> time, given that that sounds just like fgets.

Because Emacs decodes text as soon as it receives it, to show it to
users. It could delay a bit, but not too much, because users will
complain.

> So that actually supports my theory, and, my earlier suggestion
> that if fully unbuffered is undesirable, then instead make sure to
> always flush stdout before switching output to stderr, and vice
> versa, so the order is preserved.

I think this is a good solution, if indeed it solves the original
problem.