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Re: Bug: cygport fails when the working directory pathname contains spaces


Hi All,

----- Original Message ----- From: "Nellis, Kenneth" <Kenneth.Nellis@acs-inc.com>
To: <cygwin@cygwin.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2010 1:12 AM
Subject: RE: Bug: cygport fails when the working directory pathname contains spaces



From: Yaakov (Cygwin/X)
Sent: Wednesday, January 27, 2010 04:13
To: cygwin@cygwin.com
Subject: Re: Bug: cygport fails when the working directory pathname
contains spaces

On 27/01/2010 02:36, Matthias Andree wrote:
<snip/>
> If you're unwilling to fix the cygport parts of the bug, that's fine,
> but claiming that fixing it were generally not worthwhile amounts to
> blessing insecure programming practices.

Remember that cygport serves a single purpose: to build packages, and
"fixing" cygport will not guarantee that a package will build in a path
containing spaces.  For instance, both (autoconf-)configure and libtool
(by far the most common build system out there) are shell scripts, and
have certainly not worked in these situations in the past.  (I can't
speak for the current situation wrt these tools.)  So there is little
benefit in pretending to fix cygport when the result will be exactly
the same.

Maybe I should just include a sanity check to force cygport not to run
in such paths instead.

> Of course fixing cygport won't assure its user that the package
itself
> is safe in paths with blanks, but at least then you can say that
you've
> done your part and the fix is SOEP (someone else's problem).

Shifting the blame on to others won't help anybody one bit.  The
package
STILL will not build, so what has anybody gained?

> That other parts might fail is NOT AN excuse to not do your own job
in a
> way that breaks other people's expectations.

I've been around long enough to know that many (most?) people's
expectations about Cygwin are generally incorrect.  As for those who
generally use cygport, namely package maintainers, they obviously DON'T
USE SPACES because I can't remember such a complaint before.

> I'd seriously ask you to reconsider.

And if this were bugzilla I would be deciding between closing this
NOTABUG or WONTFIX. :-)


Yaakov

Despite not having a dog in this fight, I feel compelled to go on record to support Mathias and the OP that this is an obvious defect in cygports that ought to be fixed. I think an appropriate sanity check would be on a decision "to force cygport not to run in such paths" instead of fixing the defect. --Ken Nellis


My suggestion is to put the sanity check in, inform the operator where the offending line is by
supplying the file path and name, and line number, wait for the operator to acknoledge
his error and then exit with a non zero exit code..


This will change "many (most?) people's expectations about Cygwin are generally incorrect". (Words quoted from Yaakov}

Stephen


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