[Gcl-devel] Axiom on Windows GCL problems

[Page, Bill]

Mike,

I presume that you have been extraordinarily busy (as usual)
but with other things since I haven't seen your email lately
on the Axiom list. I hope you had a pleasant holiday season
in spite of the work. :)

You are probably reading the axiom mailing lists anyway, so
you know that things are progressing at a good pace - thanks
in part to your breaking of the GCL barrier for Axiom on
Windows!

Speaking of which ...

I noticed today that there is a significant problem with
compiling spad code under windows relating to the use of
default paths that include spaces. I think (but I am not
absolutely sure) that this problem actually exists at the
GCL level.

In Axiom on windows, when run from a desktop icon (significant
because Axiom behaves much better when run from inside the
MSYS development environment that simulates some unix tools
functionality), I get the following result in response to a
compile command, e.g.

  )compile PPF.spad

...
  Axiom compiler messages: (omitted)
...
  GCL lisp compile messages (I think):

Compiling C:/Documents and Settings/bpage/My Documents/PPF.NRLIB/code.lsp.
End of Pass 1.
End of Pass 2.
gcc: C:/Documents: No such file or directory
gcc: and: No such file or directory
gcc: Settings/bpage/My: No such file or directory
gcc: Documents/PPF.NRLIB/code.c: No such file or directory
gcc: and: No such file or directory
gcc: Settings/bpage/My: No such file or directory
gcc: Documents/PPF.NRLIB/code.o: No such file or directory
gcc: no input files

   >> System error:
   (SYSTEM "gcc -c -g -Wall -DVOL=volatile -fsigned-char -pipe
-fno-zero-initialized-in-bss -mms-bitfields -g -mcpu=i386
-march=i386  -IC:/msys/1.0/home/bpage/axiom-build/mnt/windows/bin/../h
-c -w C:/Documents and Settings/bpage/My Documents/PPF.NRLIB/code.c
-o C:/Documents and Settings/bpage/My Documents/PPF.NRLIB/code.o")
returned a non-zero value 1.

-------

notice how the command line arguments to gcc are mangled
because they contain spaces and are not properly escaped. If
I copy the gcc command and insert delimiters as follows:

gcc -c -g -Wall -DVOL=volatile -fsigned-char -pipe
-fno-zero-initialized-in-bss -mms-bitfields -g -mcpu=i386
-march=i386  -IC:/msys/1.0/home/bpage/axiom-build/mnt/windows/bin/../h
-c -w "C:/Documents and Settings/bpage/My Documents/PPF.NRLIB/code.c"
-o "C:/Documents and Settings/bpage/My Documents/PPF.NRLIB/code.o"

and then paste it into a command window, gcc runs and produces
a object file normally. So I know everything else is ok. And of
course this also works if Axiom and GCL are installed in
directories so that the paths do not contain spaces.

--------

So, I was wondering if you might be able to quickly point
me in the right direction to fix this problem. I know that
at some point GCL is going to convert so-called path
expressions like #P"c:xxxx yyy zzz" into actual command line
arguments. I think that what is happening is that this
conversion is removing the "quotes" but that these should
remain especially on the windows platform - but maybe under
linux as well even though users much less frequently employ
paths with spaces under linux.

Regards,
Bill Page.