[boost] [filesystem][cygwin] Standard conformance for wide characters

Subject: [boost] [filesystem][cygwin] Standard conformance for wide characters
From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-01-13 09:16:02

I've decided not to attempt support for Cygwin in the next version of 
Boost.Filesystem.

Cygwin's lack of library support for wchar_t is the problem . For the 
current Boost.Filesystem version (v2), the necessary workarounds are so 
pervasive that the implementation code is much harder to read and 
maintain. Witness the number of bug reports that are Cygwin specific. 
For v3, currently under development, trying to support Cygwin would be 
even harder, and would cause a serious delay in development. Plus I'm 
tired of waiting for the cygwin folks to come into full C++ conformance.

IIUC, the reason Cygwin doesn't provide C++ standard library support for 
wchar_t is that the underlying C library is missing the C wchar_t 
functions. Perhaps Boosters who care about Cygwin could spearhead an 
effort to add the missing C support? The needed functionality isn't all 
that complex; the main problem might be just learning enough about how 
Cygwin/GCC is configured and built to be able to add a fairy small 
number of C functions.

Thoughts?

--Beman