Re: [PATCH] use get_merge_tool_path() also in is_available() to honor settings

[Adam Dinwoodie <adam@dinwoodie.org>]

On Mon, 30 Aug 2021 at 01:09, David Aguilar <davvid@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd like to extend 47eb4c6890 (mergetools/kdiff3: make kdiff3 work on
> Windows too, 2021-06-07)
> but in order to do so I need a reliable way to special-case Windows so
> that we only do the x -> x.exe translation there.
>
> What's the best way to detect Windows? t/test-lib.sh seems to detect
> Windows using "uname -s" and
> checking for matches against *MINGW* or *CYGWIN*. Is that reliable /
> recommended?

I don't think there's a single canonical way to do this, but that's
certainly an effective way.

However I'd suggest not adding special-case code for Cygwin here, only
for MinGW: the general design principles for Cygwin are such that
*nix-native code should require minimal changes to work on Cygwin, and
in particular the Cygwin compatibility layer should look after adding
that extension, rather than requiring the application code to handle
the special case. Both approaches would work, but I think it makes
sense to follow the general Cygwin design principle here of not adding
unnecessary special casing to handle it, and to leave it to the Cygwin
compatibility layer instead.