Re: [PATCH] aclocal: handle ACLOCAL_PATH environment variable

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Stefano Lattarini wrote on Thu, Nov 04, 2010 at 10:03:27PM CET:
> On Thursday 04 November 2010, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> > * Stefano Lattarini wrote on Wed, Nov 03, 2010 at 04:24:51PM CET:
> > > Shouldn't we use address@hidden@' here instead of `:', for better
> > > portability to windows?
> > 
> > The last time this was proposed somebody remarked that it may not be
> > best design to make semantics dependent on which shell is used (e.g.,
> > using MinGW once with MSYS and the other time with COMMAND.COM means
> > differing separators).
> Why?  Shouldn't the shell always use `;' as PATH-seperator on Windows?
> Using `:' seems like a mistake, since if prevents adding directories with
> absolute paths like `C:\foo' to PATH.

MSYS maps things like /c/foo to C:/foo (or C:\foo or so) for
non-MSYS-native tools.  It's actually the runtime that does this,
and the rules are a bit subtle, requiring the user to sometimes pass
arguments like /h as //h so they are not mangled.  See the MinGW/MSYS
wiki and documentation.

Cheers,
Ralf