On Fri, 24 Mar 2000 22:55:31 +0300, pla@cland.ru wrote:

>Hi!
>
>I successfully downloaded CVS of libextensions and was surprised not to see
>EMX in it at all. I try to reason what for we need EMX there.Well here we
>have some funcs and stat() and fstat() among them. I want to port latest
>EFM and _ino things keep me from porting. If EMX was in libextensions CVS I
>will correct EMX and build DLL already compatible with EMX one.

I am not sure if I understand you correctly. Nevertheless, I am pleased
that you ask these questions, because they are important. I'll try to
answer:

We cannot merge libext and emx on the long run because of different
licenses. Emx uses a kind of specially modified GPL license for libc
functions. We will use a BSD-style license. If we merge both, the viral
character of GPL will 'infect' practically our _whole_ library.

Because of this we must cleanly separate both libraries. In case that
any doubt about too much 'inspiration' through emx code remains, we
will ask Eberhard Mattes for permission to use some of his ideas in our
strongly modified library and with our license. If he refuses to give
us this permission, we must reengineer from scratch parts like statx
that still have a certain similarity with emx. In general our goal is
to reuse as much 4.4 BSD Net/2 Release code as possible and to write
our own kernel interfaces from scratch. It would be inconsistent, if
criticised the DOS'ish emx C library _and_ followed in important parts
ideas of this library at the same time. So please consider remaining
similarities to emx in _our_ code as being "fast'n dirty hacks" for
testing purposes, only.

>Of course making funcs is our primary goal, but why can't we integrate
>libextensions into EMX.

Because EMX is property of Eberhard Mattes and he has repeatedly
rejected - for several years now and not without good reasons - to
follow a route like our's. If he does not change his mind (and why
should he let _us_ spoil emx, emx was not created for Arnd's or
Platon's or Holger's pleasure, but for Eberhard's completely different
goal of multi-platform Dos/OS2/Win32 support with a limited number of
Un*x interfaces) we must respect his decision and must and _will_ leave
emx completely untouched. 

To make it absolutely clear: Our intention of seamless Un*x integration
on top of the OS/2 kernel is not any better or worse than Eberhard's;
it's only different! And it is incompatible. A mixture of both will
lead to nowhere. This does _not_ mean that you cannot (and at this
moment you even must do that) link against ANSI streams and other
utility functions in the opaque emx dll's. It means: 

	We will not mix up the sources!

> I just press on this because I really do not want
>to mess with stat() fstat() and lstat() from different places and want to
>keep them in 1 place.

Yes, keep them in 1 place: libextensions. Help us to write a complete
and BSD compatible sys/stat.h implementation. If you then specify _our_
library before emx libs on the linker command line, all stat references
will be seamlessly resolved by _our_ library. Application programmers
even won't notice what is actually happening; they will only notice
that their Linux/SunOS/BSD sources now compile and run correctly. The
relevant emx functions in the dll will not be linked in. Please
remember: First specify, first resolve. And what has already been
resolved cannot be re-resolved.

>So not to speak - I can try to place all EMX in CVS (if given permissions)
>and and can try to make it makeable from CVS (it is no problem) I will not
>place there compiler, just DLL's and related.

Don't you do that, naughty boy, or Eberhard will never again be your
friend ;-) 

Don't spoil his clean and consistent work and make a mess of it by
mixing up everything ! This would be a very unfriendly behaviour.
Respect years of work of other people.

>About files from CVS : absolutely no bugs  -kb key made all files Unix
>like, I work with them in FileCommander without slightest problem.

Pleased to hear.

>Or may be I am just running before the train and its too early to think
>about EMX ;) ?

No, this was absolute the adequate moment for asking those questions.
As I've already said: I'm glad you asked those central questions now.

Cheers,

	Arnd


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