From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: GnuTLS for W32 Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2012 01:41:14 -0500 Message-ID: References: <87aa64ubg9.fsf@wanadoo.es> <83boqkr9bp.fsf@gnu.org> <874nwcu17i.fsf@wanadoo.es> <834nwcr6un.fsf@gnu.org> <87vcosskhc.fsf@wanadoo.es> <831urgr2yr.fsf@gnu.org> <87r4zgsh2w.fsf@wanadoo.es> <87ipks3zbo.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87boqk3q69.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87aa634st8.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87fwfvsgfv.fsf@wanadoo.es> <877h17scdo.fsf@wanadoo.es> <87hb0b77nr.fsf@lifelogs.com> <8739bvs27m.fsf@wanadoo.es> <87lipnqdhy.fsf@wanadoo.es> Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1325745686 22441 80.91.229.12 (5 Jan 2012 06:41:26 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2012 06:41:26 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: =?utf-8?Q?=C3=93scar?= Fuentes Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Jan 05 07:41:21 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([140.186.70.17]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Rih0q-0004E3-F7 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 05 Jan 2012 07:41:20 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:32959 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Rih0p-0005Bs-ME for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 05 Jan 2012 01:41:19 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:35652) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Rih0n-0005Ad-07 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 05 Jan 2012 01:41:18 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Rih0l-0006MY-0H for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 05 Jan 2012 01:41:16 -0500 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([140.186.70.10]:41527) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Rih0k-0006MT-TZ for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 05 Jan 2012 01:41:14 -0500 Original-Received: from eliz by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Rih0k-00081O-M0; Thu, 05 Jan 2012 01:41:14 -0500 In-reply-to: <87lipnqdhy.fsf@wanadoo.es> (message from =?utf-8?Q?=C3=93sca?= =?utf-8?Q?r?= Fuentes on Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:00:57 +0100) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) X-Received-From: 140.186.70.10 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:147320 Archived-At: > From: Óscar Fuentes > Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:00:57 +0100 > > You can bet on it. At the beginning there was several versions of > MSVCRT.DLL floating around, some of them notoriously buggy. Of course, > everybody installed the dll on system32. The problem was partially fixed > by SxS, which essentially ensured that applications that didn't embed > manifests (and hence didn't required a specific version of the dll) used > the default, "safe" one provided by MS with the OS. That started with > Windows XP, although it doesn't protect you from inadvertently picking a > dll inside a directory that comes first on PATH. With Windows 2000, I > had to face one of the more frustrating bugs on my career: a few users > reported crashes, freezes and data corruption (on a DB app!). It took me > months to discover the problem for one of the users: a mass storage > device driver and accompanying backup utility installed their own > custom-modified MSVCRT.DLL on system32, which somehow caused my app to > freeze when certain gui action was performed. They didn't bothered to > use a different version string or id on the resources of the library, so > it reported itself as one of the "good" dlls. Then I started to put my > runtime dlls on the same directory as the rest of my binaries, and the > problems of those users disappeared. Most of them haven't that storage > device. The issue costed me a several hundred work hours, mostly trying > to desperately find bugs inside my application. Conclusions based on experiences from Windows 2000 should be tossed as irrelevant nowadays. Citing this is a good "war story", but has no bearing on design decisions for future features. In addition, latest GnuTLS cannot be compiled with MinGW in a way that will run on anything older than XP anyway. (Maybe some non-trivial tweaking could overcome that, but I didn't bother, and if Nikos built the stock distribution, which is what I glean from his script, then his binaries have the same limitation.) So let's forget about Windows 2000; it's irrelevant for this thread, if not for any other thread.