[boost] Re: Shouldn't boost::filesystem be BOOST_POSIX on cygwin?

From: David Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-08-22 16:15:27

Beman Dawes <bdawes_at_[hidden]> writes:

> At 08:32 AM 8/18/2004, David Abrahams wrote:
>  >Jeremy Maitin-Shepard <jbms_at_[hidden]> writes:
>  >
>  >> I brought this up a while ago.  I believe Beman stated as a rationale
>  >> for this behavior that he and other boost developers and users like to
>  >> use Windows native paths in Cygwin, using Cygwin as an environment for
>  >> Windows software development.
>  >
>  >I think that's a bad rationale.  In point of fact most cygwin tools
>  >can handle either path format, but the native representation is
>  >indeed a POSIX one.
>
> Boost filesystem, like cygwin, has to support both. There are
> significant numbers of cygwin users for both the Windows and POSIX
> environments.
>
>  >> You can define BOOST_POSIX when compiling to force POSIX path handling.
>  >> Arguably, POSIX should be the default on Cygwin, since it is
>     designed to
>  >> be a POSIX emulation environment, and many users surely use it as such.
>  >
>  >Yeah.  But IMO on cygwin boost::filesystem should handle both formats.
>
> It does. The docs were updated after the last release to make that clearer.

That's not what I meant.  It should support both formats in a single
build, just like most cygwin tools do.  

  dave_at_penguin ~
  $ ls c:/boost/index.htm
  c:/boost/index.htm

  dave_at_penguin ~
  $ ls c:\\boost\\index.htm
  c:\boost\index.htm

  dave_at_penguin ~
  $ ls /cygdrive/c/boost/index.htm
  /cygdrive/c/boost/index.htm

about the only cygwin tool I've found that doesn't recognize regular
windows paths is scp, and that's because the colon is already used to
separate host from path:

   scp index.htm shell.sf.net:/home/groups/b/bo/boost/htdocs

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
http://www.boost-consulting.com