[GRASS-dev] Re: MS-Windows native GRASS

[Glynn Clements]

Huidae Cho wrote:

> > That's a mistake. As the name implies, grass-xterm-wrapper is supposed
> > to be a front-end to an xterm-like terminal program. Its sole purpose
> > is to allow terminals other than xterm to be used for programs which
> > require a terminal. Once we eventually eliminate the need to use a
> > terminal, it will go away altogether.
> 
> I agree, rxvt may be more suitable for the wrapper. But, curses based
> modules (I didn't count how many modules actually depend on this library)
> don't work with rxvt and that's why I chose cmd.exe for winGRASS.  For
> example, grass -text doesn't work in rxvt.

cmd.exe isn't a terminal emulator, it's a shell. Windows automatically
creates consoles for console-mode programs such as cmd.exe (unless you
use "start /b ...").

While *something* needs to be done on Windows, the solution *doesn't*
involve grass-xterm-wrapper. Which is why I've reverted the recent
attempt to replace grass-xterm-wrapper (it was getting compiled on
Linux, where it totally won't work; there is no sh.exe on Linux).

Note that it wouldn't have worked on Windows either, as it made no
attempt at escaping shell metacharacters.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>