Re: RFA: Support Windows extended error numbers in safe_strerror

Mark Kettenis
2006-02-03T23:25:58Z

> Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 16:54:55 -0500
> From: Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@false.org>
>
> This is an improved version of a patch Mark Mitchell submitted last
> year. If you give strerror() anything above 42 (sys_nerr) on Windows,
> it gives you back "Unknown error" - particularly unfortunate since
> WSAECONNREFUSED is way above there, so connecting to a closed socket
> will give you a generic error message. This patch lets us try an
> OS-specific interface to fetch an error string.
>
> [Actually you need my next patch too to get the connection refused message;
> right now you'll get a timeout.]
>
> Any comments on this patch?

I think this is ugly. When the win32 support was added, we were told
that only minimal changes were necessary. But people keep pushing
#ifdef EVIL_CLOSED_SOURCE_PLATFORM_FROM_REDMOND patches.

GDB is written for POSIX systems. It's clear that Windows isn't even
remotely POSIX compliant.

Mark