Re: MSVC build test results

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2005 16:57:56 -0400
> From: "Paul D. Smith" <address@hidden>
> Cc: GNU Make W32 <address@hidden>
> 
>   ! make: Entering directory `/home/now3d/make/tests'
> 
> and here is the actual log of the invocation of GNU make:
> 
>   ! make: Entering directory `C:/msys/1.0/home/now3d/make/tests'
> 
> GNU make runs the getcwd() function to get the current directory.  We
> need to find a way in Perl to have it return the same value GNU make
> gets.

One obvious way is to get Perl to run Make in order to get Make's
notion of the current directory.

>   >> That's exactly what I'm saying: according to the perl docs that's
>   >> what the code in the test suite is supposed to be doing.  Please run
>   >> this and let me know what it says:
>   >> 
>   >> perl -e 'if (eval { symlink("",""); 1 }) { print "symlinks ok\n"; }'
> 
>   jg> address@hidden ~
>   jg> $ perl -e 'if (eval { symlink("",""); 1 }) { print "symlinks ok\n"; }'
>   jg> symlinks ok
> 
> Ugh!
> 
>   jg> I guess this means that ln -s is actually does a copy. ln --version
>   jg> shows ln (fileutils) 4.1
> 
> No; this is using the system call symlink().  It's not invoking a
> program like "ln -s".  Windows Perl shouldn't support that, since it
> doesn't work.

Some Windows ports of interpreters such as Bash and Perl think
symlinks work because they are emulated either with Windows shortcuts
or with some other special files.

I think it's best to disable symlink-related tests on Windows
unconditionally, without actually trying to test them.  The reason is
that symlink support in Windows ports is inconsistent, so tests that
use symlinks have a good chance to fail.