plans for file related modules on Windows

[Bruno Haible]

Hi,

It's clear that different gnulib users need different levels of native Windows
support. Some will want to avoid 'struct stat', some will want to use the ino_t
values in struct stat.

Here's my current plan: Introduce a set of orthogonal, transversal modules.
("transversal" in the sense that such a module does not provide a function,
but rather provides guarantees for other modules.)

- windows-year2038 : define time_t as 64-bit (might involve renaming module 
time to time-h)
- windows-symlinks : add symlink support to stat, lstat, readlink etc.
- windows-stat-timespec : add 100ns resolution to file times
- windows-stat-inodes : redefine dev_t, ino_t
- windows-uid : redefine uid_t [1]
- windows-gid : redefine gid_t [1]
- windows-utf8-filenames : implies override of all file-related functions
- largefile : support for files > 2 GB (already partially implemented in 2012)

An override of 'struct stat' will be necessary for windows-year2038,
windows-stat-timespec, windows-stat-inodes, windows-uid, windows-gid, largefile.

What do you think about it?

Which of these modules would you like to see implemented first?

    Bruno

[1] as proposed by Bastien Roucariès
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2011-09/msg00130.html