Re: [RFA] defs.h _WIN32 defined by Win98, too

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@is.elta.co.il>]

On Wed, 1 Aug 2001, Keith Seitz wrote:

> > > `/home/keiths/sources/insight/gdb\gdb.exe' has disappeared; keeping its
> > > symbols.
> > >
> > > Starting program: /home/keiths/sources/insight/gdb\gdb.exe
> > > Error creating process /home/keiths/sources/insight/gdb\gdb.exe (error 2)
> > > [often crashes here]
> > >
> > > Apparently, Win98 defines _WIN32 somewhere...
> >
> > So perhaps there's a bug in Cygwin ;-)
> 
> Nope. Works fine on Win2000 using EXACTLY the same environment.

So you are saying that the same version of Cygwin defines _WIN32 on 
Windows 98, but not on W2K?  isn't that strange?

> > Anyway, didn't Chris say that _WIN32 should be removed from GDB
> > everywhere?  If that's so, the ifdef _WIN32 should be simply deleted,
> > instead of lumping more ifdefs on top of it.  For SLASH_STRING in
> > particular, this shouldn't be a problem at all, since Windows supports
> > forward slashes as well as backslashes, even if GDB is built with MS
> > run-time DLLs.
> 
> Windows does NOT support both forward and backward slashes in this
> context. Or perhaps more correctly, cygwin does not support both.

My analysis of the problem is different; it goes like this:

  - somehow, _WIN32 got defined on Windows 98;

  - because _WIN32 is defined, GDB is compiled so as to use the
    backslash as a directory separator in file names;

  - GDB then constructs file names with a backslash, and gets 
    /home/keiths/sources/insight/gdb\gdb.exe instead of the normal 
    /home/keiths/sources/insight/gdb/gdb.exe (see the file source.c);

  - the backslash confuses Cygwin library functions which manipulate file 
    names, probably because it doesn't grok backslashes.

> I don't
> know (and frankly don't care) who is to blame. Gdb doesn't work on Win98.

I don't argue with facts; it's clear that something breaks GDB.  But I 
think we need to understand why does _WIN32 get defined on some systems, 
but not on others.

> As for eliminating SLASH_STRING, well, that's a much bigger and riskier
> change than the simple, pragmatic approach I've taken.

I didn't say eliminate SLASH_STRING, I said eliminate _WIN32.  That is, 
make SLASH_STRING always be "/", but don't replace it with a literal "/".