[GRASS5] mkfifo start for cygwin

[John Huddleston]

Hi Malcolm, (Grass)

I used to subscribe to the Cygwin list until I switched jobs
last September.  I couldn't keep up with the volume.  At 
that point in time, Corinna Vinschen corinna.vinschen at cityweb.de
ftp://ftp.franken.de/pub/win32/develop/gnuwin32/cygwin/porters/Vinschen_Corinna/
stated that she would be working on it if no one else
tackled it.   I do not know her status.  In addition, see
http://sources.redhat.com/cgi-bin/cygwin-todo.cgi
for a list of where the Cygwin development issues reside.

I expect that we should continue on our progress. I'll
send a note to Joey Mukherjee and ask for a status on
the namedpipes.

John Huddleston


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Malcolm Blue" <mblue at nb.sympatico.ca>
To: <grass5 at geog.uni-hannover.de>
Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2000 7:59 PM
Subject: Re: [GRASS5] mkfifo start for cygwin


> John,
> 
> I have been following the cygwin mailing lists for a while and it seems
> that some of the core developers have made some starts at fifo
> implementation but haven't decided which approach to use.  Since you
> have been in contact with some of them, you may have more recent
> information.  Are they close to having something working, do you think?
> I seem to recall that fairly recently there was an exchange of emails
> posted that pointed out reasons for not using various approaches, but
> there was no indication that they were still actively working on
> anything.  If there is a clear indication that they will be implementing
> something soon,  I can probably find more productive pursuits than
> learning IPC messaging.  If fifo's are to be implemented as a part of
> the standard cygwin distribution in the future then that is probably a
> better path to follow.
> 
> I could (and probably will) keep on working on the IPC code a bit more
> to see if I can get it working - even a little.  It seems to have a few
> kludges built into it, but it may serve as a temporary fix for now.
> Right now, I have been setting up some tests to see how well it behaves
> as a msg queue server and have found some unexpected results (not the
> good kind), even for the standalone tests that mimic the simple d.mon
> programs and XDRIVER startup/status/close.  I haven't even gotten into
> the message send and receive code in any detail yet (although my simple
> tests show that these work ok if the queues are managed cleanly).  To
> make it robust may take quite a bit of effort.  To just make it work
> should not be too big a job, but will still take several days to make it
> even close to reliable.  It seems to work very well in a basic mode of
> operation, but does not behave well the way that the grass routines use
> IPC message queues.   I will be able to work on it again in January if
> others think that the cygwin IPC is worthwhile pursuing. (I probably
> will anyway since I hate quitting anything in midstream.)
> 
> I will also take a look at the mkfifo implementation you pointed to
> since there may be a cleaner solution there.  I will look to see if
> these can be used with the existing code base, with a little hacking.
> >From archived mailing list discussions it seems that fifo's are more
> portable.  If a temporary fix with fifo's is available, that may be a
> better alternative in the long run.
> 
> Either approach will probably still be experimental in nature.  I will
> post my results to the mailing list so that you and other interested
> parties can provide suggestions and so that I don't step on anyone's
> toes if they are doing related tasks.
> 
> Speaking of related tasks:  Andreas Lange has said that he has started
> to merge the IPC and fifo codes into one setup.  If he is doing this
> mainly for the cygwin port, is this still something worth doing? ( I
> expect that Andreas will let us know if there are other good reasons for
> continuing.)
> 
> If you, or anyone else!!!, has any other relevant information,  please
> pass it on.  I would rather contribute my efforts to a joint cause than
> just get something working for myself.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Malcolm



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