Re: [musl] Re: Regression: git no longer works with musl libc's regex impl

[Rich Felker <dalias@libc.org>]

On Wed, Oct 05, 2016 at 12:11:58PM -0400, Jeff King wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 05, 2016 at 10:59:34PM +1100, James B wrote:
> 
> > Number downloads does not make first-tier platform. You know that as
> > well as everyone else.
> > 
> > First-tier support is the decision made by the maintainers that the
> > entire features of the software must be available on those first tier
> > platforms. So if Windows is indeed first-tier platform for git, it
> > means any features that don't work on git version of Windows must not
> > be used/developed or even castrated. That's a scary thought.
> 
> Prepare to be scared, then, I guess. Ever since the msysgit project
> started years ago, we have made concessions in the code to work both
> with POSIX-ish systems and with the msys layer. E.g., see how git-daemon
> does not fork(), but actually re-spawns itself to handle connections.
> 
> When possible we try to put our abstractions at a level where they can
> be implemented in a performant way on all platforms (the git-daemon
> things is probably the _most_ ugly in that respect; I think nobody has
> really cared about the performance enough to add back in a forking code
> path for POSIX systems).
> 
> > So this decision that "Windows is now a first-tier platform for git" -
> > is your own opinion, or is this the collective opinion of *all* the
> > git maintainers?
> 
> There is only one maintainer of git: Junio. However, you'll note that I
> also used "we" in the paragraphs above. And that is because the approach
> I am talking about is something that has been done over the course of
> many years by many members of the development community.
> 
> You may disagree with that approach, but it is nothing new. The msysgit
> project started in 2007.

The goal of the midipix project is to make the need for FOSS projects
supporting Windows to do hacks like this obsolete. It still has a
little ways to go to be ready for mainstream use, but it's already
running a lot, and I hope you'll consider it for the future since it
simplifies things A LOT when you can just write to POSIX instead of
having to come up with abstraction layers that cater to Windows'
brokenness.

> > Well thank you for being honest. I can see now why you responded the
> > way you did (and still do). By being employed by Microsoft, and
> > especially paid to work on Git for Windows, you have all the
> > incentives to make it work best on Windows, and to make it as its
> > first-tier platform within the limitation of Windows.
> 
> Please don't insinuate that Johannes is a Microsoft shill. He has been
> working on the Windows port of Git for over 9 years, and was only
> employed by Microsoft this year. Furthermore, his original REG_STARTEND
> patch actually did a run-time fallback of NUL-terminating the input
> buffers. It was _I_ who suggested that we should simply push people
> towards our compat/regex routines instead. So if you want to be mad at
> somebody, be mad at me.

I hope we can get this thread away from accusing and attacking people
and on to doing productive things to make the software better.

Rich