Re: Rationale for line-ending recommendation?

[Christopher Faylor <cgf-use-the-mailinglist-please at cygwin dot com>]

On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 06:34:19AM -0700, Eric Blake wrote:
>According to David Abrahams on 12/18/2008 7:42 PM:
>>Can anyone explain why the installer began recommending using *nix line
>>ending conventions?
>
>Because Unix line endings work out of the box with more programs, and
>because it is faster, and because it gets a lot more testing.  And
>mainly because doing it globally is wrong - text mode mounts are useful
>for a subset of directories, but not all directories.  In fact, the 1.7
>setup.exe removes that option altogether, so that you have to
>explicitly select text mode for the directories where it will be useful
>to you by changing your /etc/fstab.
>
>>DOS-compatible endings have always "just worked" for me and I've heard
>>of lots of problems doing it the now-recommended way.
>
>Usually it's the other way around - people have problems when using
>CR-LF line endings with applications that expect LF line endings; it is
>that case where mounting that particular directory as text mode helps
>things out.  Using a binary mount instead of a text mount means that
>you don't create problematic files in the first place.

And, strangely enough, some of the problems were even mentioned by
someone who apparently likes CRLF line endings.

This came up on IRC in the same way too.

"I don't see why they don't use CRLF line endings."

"Me too!  It makes no sense!"

"I know!  They only seem to affect XYZ."

"I know!  And ABC too."

"You're right!  And apparently QWERTY doesn't work either."

"Exactly!  So it's a mystery why they don't just make it the default.
I never have any problems."

cgf

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