[Fwd: Re: Last item on TODO list for mc before 4.6.1]

[Leonard den Ottolander <leonard den ottolander nl>]

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Pavel Roskin <proski gnu org>
To: Leonard den Ottolander <leonard den ottolander nl>
Subject: Re: Last item on TODO list for mc before 4.6.1
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 12:01:01 -0400

On Wed, 22 Sep 2004, Leonard den Ottolander wrote:

> Hello Pavel,
>
> As you seem to insist that this item gets fixed before 4.6.1, could you
> please explain the last item on the TODO list?

When the viewer uses a filter, the filtering program (e.g. gzip) can 
return errors to stderr even before it completes.  There was a function to 
drain and display the stderr output before the viewer starts.  I removed 
it because it was problematic and Valgrind reported memory access 
problems.  The whole code was a hack around popen.  I believe the right 
solution would be to use our own popen replacement that would intercept 
strerr properly.

popen implementations are different across OSes, and it's another reason 
to avoid it.  But I don't insist on fixing it everywhere before 4.6.1.

> There is some confusion as to what should exactly is broken and should
> be fixed. Could you please explain the issue and how it can be
> reproduced? Any thoughts on where in the code to fix this?

Take a large file, gzip it.  Press F3 on it.  Exit the viewer by F10. 
You'll see something like this:

mc-proski/mcextery93a: line 2:  4118 Broken pipe             gzip -dc 
HardImage1.gz 2>/dev

Out popen replacement should not complain about "broken pipe".

Sorry that I cannot elaborate more.  I'm very pressed right now :-(
Please feel free to forward to the list.
-- 
mount -t life -o ro /dev/dna /genetic/research