[boost] Re: 1.31.0 release plans

From: Anthony Williams (anthony.williamsNOSPAM_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-09-29 03:51:09

Beman Dawes <bdawes_at_[hidden]> writes:
> At 04:13 AM 9/28/2003, Baptiste Lepilleur wrote:
>  >    There is one element that can be improved when making the tarball (and
>  >maybe the zip) of boost. All VC++ (.dsp & .dsw) project files (obtained
>  >from the tarball)  have unix line ending, which prevents using them
>  >directly in VC++ (you need to convert the line ending to DOS or VC++
>  >will report an error).
>  >
>  >    Adding a step before generating the tarball that correct the line
>  >ending of those specific files would resolve the issue.
>
> The .zip distribution file preserves line endings.
>
> The .tar.gz and .tar.bz2 distribution files have all line endings converted
> to newlines.
>
> The expectation is that someone who works in a VC++ environment is a Windows
> user, and so should download the .zip distribution.
>
> It sounds to me as if you may have downloaded the .gz or .bz2 distributions
> intended for UNIX/POSIX systems, then tried to use it on Windows with VC++.
>
> I'll update the release notes to make that clearer.

The .tar.bz2 distributions are smaller than the .zip, so even though I work on
Windows most of the time, I would rather download the .tar.bz2
distribution. Most of the time the line endings are irrelevant (most editors
can cope with plain LF rather than CRLF, even on Windows --- I think it's only
Notepad that has problems), but in a few specific cases (e.g. the .dsp files)
the line endings *are* relevant. Since these files are no use at all on a UNIX
system, it would make sense to preserve the CRLF line endings in these files
in all distributions.

Just my 2p.

Anthony
-- 
Anthony Williams
Senior Software Engineer, Beran Instruments Ltd.
Remove NOSPAM when replying, for timely response.