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RE: [Gcl-devel] RE: [Axiom-developer] system::getenv does not ret urn MS


From: Page, Bill
Subject: RE: [Gcl-devel] RE: [Axiom-developer] system::getenv does not ret urn MSYS environment variables
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 23:34:03 -0500

Mike,

On Tuesday, December 07, 2004 7:17 PM you wrote:
> 
> I suspect something is wrong at your end, I have no
> troubles reading either MSYS or Windows environment
> variables (I believe the build would not work if
> this were not the case):

Yes, you are right. It apparently takes some special
effort to create the situation where the failure starts
to occur. (See previous message.)

> 
> Is it possible you were expecting an Axiom system
> launched separately from an MSYS shell to see the
> environment variables in a separate MSYS shell?

No I understand that MSYS is a sub-process running under
windows.

But as I am quite sure you are aware, Windows memory
protection is quite a bit "softer" than under Linux. It is
quite easy (especially on older versions of windows) for
one miss-behaving process to step on the memory of other
processes or even the operating system. When I am feeling
generous to the Windows OS designers (not often), I might
claim that this is the price one pays for focusing on
"open" threaded processes for speed versus the security
and greater overhead of the Unix OS design. Hardware
advances have made it all moot anyway, but Windows still
has some of the original legacy.

Some of the things that I hear about that GCL apparently
does in memory really scares me when I think about Windows ...
that's when I feel like it's purely amazing that any of this
works at all! :)) I think the extraordinary skills of the
GCL developers (you included) are absolutely essential to
this success.

Cheers,
Bill Page.




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