Re: gettext binaries for Cygwin

[Brian Inglis]

On 2024-12-04 14:23, Bruno Haible wrote:
> Denis Excoffier wrote:
> > > If so, why is this patch present? Is it considered to be a feature?
> > Yes it is. As a unix (or Linux, which is the target for Cygwin) user, i don’t 
> > want to observe
> > any interference between the Windows Control Panel, which is (presumably) only 
> > used for non-unix features
> > of the Windows system (but nevertheless including Cygwin-specific features like 
> > e.g. the setup program) and
> > unix programs typically run on the command line.
> > For those, the result with LANG=C should be the same as the result without 
> > setting LANG (with LC_* also not used of course).
>
> I don't adhere to this point of view. Cygwin programs run in Windows,
> present their results in Windows windows, communicate with Windows programs,
> and therefore should obey the same configuration settings as other Windows
> programs.

I think most Cygwin project members would disagree: Cygwin is like QEMU in that 
it is an emulator providing a POSIX environment under an MS Windows host.

On my system, Cygwin programs present their results in X windows running xterm, 
lxterminal, qterminal, or anything else I want to install, which the Cygwin X 
server allows to be presented as multi-root MS Windows or X rooted windows, 
displaying on other systems, or running on other systems displaying under 
Cygwin, using screen/tmux/ssh sessions as any other Unix, using authorized_keys 
and known_hosts for convenience, including under VMs on this system.

I believe some volunteers use Fedora hosts with Cygwin cross-tools and test 
under Wine or MS Windows VMs.

For user convenience, Cygwin interoperates under Windows and pulls some limited 
user settings from Windows at login and puts them in environment variables for 
use by Cygwin programs.

One major annoyance for packagers is having to patch out configuration tests or 
code which fails, causes programs built to fail, or not work as expected, 
because Cygwin is treated like Windows not Unix [used to be like Solaris now 
Linux mainly Fedora based -- see package naming; I set up new Cygwin package 
ports by downloading the Fedora rawhide spec (or OpenSuSE) and convert to 
cygport bash script based on Gentoo portage ebuilds (which I also sometimes use 
as a base, with less work; or Debian with more work)].

> A user who does not want internationalization specifically for Cygwin programs
> can do so by setting LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 (as documented in [1]).
>
> But by default, the user expectation is that the Control Panel settings hold.
> See e.g. [2].

That is one of the environment variables set at login by /etc/profile.d/lang.sh 
using Cygwin locale, from Cygwin initialization converting from the MS Windows 
System build, Language Pack, Input Languages, and Regional Settings Formats as 
POSIX locales.

> [1] 
> https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Setting-the-POSIX-Locale.html
> [2] https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?66491
It would be nice if we could get all Cygwin GNU program configs to easily ignore 
Windows and just assume Linux (Fedora) or BSD builds (newlib libc is based on 
bits of BSDs and so licensed that RedHat and many other vendors can use it to 
support their boards and/or tool chains and/or RTOS development - under any 
Unix, or MS Windows using Cygwin).

--
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis              Calgary, Alberta, Canada

La perfection est atteinte                   Perfection is achieved
non pas lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à ajouter  not when there is no more to add
mais lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à retirer     but when there is no more to cut
                                -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry