newlib-cygwin/winsup/doc/faq-api.xml

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<qandadiv id="faq.api">
<title>Cygwin API Questions</title>

<!-- faq-api.xml --> 
<qandaentry id="faq.api.everything">
<question><para>How does everything work?</para></question>
<answer>

<para>There's a C library which provides a POSIX-style API.  The
applications are linked with it and voila - they run on Windows.
</para>
<para>The aim is to add all the goop necessary to make your apps run on
Windows into the C library.  Then your apps should (ideally) run on POSIX
systems (Unix/Linux) and Windows with no changes at the source level.
</para>
<para>The C library is in a DLL, which makes basic applications quite small.
And it allows relatively easy upgrades to the Win32/POSIX translation
layer, providing that DLL changes stay backward-compatible.
</para>
<para>For a good overview of Cygwin, you may want to read the Cygwin
User's Guide.
</para>
</answer></qandaentry>

<qandaentry id="faq.api.snapshots">
<question><para>Are development snapshots for the Cygwin library available?</para></question>
<answer>

<para>Yes.  They're made whenever anything interesting happens inside the
Cygwin library (usually roughly on a nightly basis, depending on how much
is going on).  They are only intended for those people who wish to
contribute code to the project.  If you aren't going to be happy
debugging problems in a buggy snapshot, avoid these and wait for a real
release.  The snapshots are available from
<ulink url="https://cygwin.com/snapshots/"/>.
</para>
</answer></qandaentry>

<qandaentry id="faq.api.cr-lf">
<question><para>How is the DOS/Unix CR/LF thing handled?</para></question>
<answer>

<para>Let's start with some background.
</para>
<para>On POSIX systems, a file is a file and what the file contains is
whatever the program/programmer/user told it to put into it.  In Windows,
a file is also a file and what the file contains depends not only on the
program/programmer/user but also the file processing mode.
</para>
<para>When processing in text mode, certain values of data are treated
specially.  A \n (new line, NL) written to the file will prepend a \r
(carriage return, CR) so that if you `printf("Hello\n") you in fact get
"Hello\r\n".  Upon reading this combination, the \r is removed and the
number of bytes returned by the read is 1 less than was actually read.
This tends to confuse programs dependent on ftell() and fseek().  A
Ctrl-Z encountered while reading a file sets the End Of File flags even
though it truly isn't the end of file.
</para>
<para>One of Cygwin's goals is to make it possible to mix Cygwin-ported
POSIX programs with generic Windows programs.  As a result, Cygwin allows
to open files in text mode.  In the accompanying tools, tools that deal
with binaries (e.g. objdump) operate in POSIX binary mode and many (but
not all) tools that deal with text files (e.g. bash) operate in text mode.
There are also some text tools which operate in a mixed mode.  They read
files always in text mode, but write files in binary mode, or they write
in the mode (text or binary) which is specified by the underlying mount
point.  For a description of mount points, see the Cygwin User's Guide.
</para>
<para>Actually there's no really good reason to do text mode processing
since it only slows down reading and writing files.  Additionally many
Windows applications can deal with POSIX \n line endings just fine
(unfortunate exception: Notepad).  So we suggest to use binary mode
as much as possible and only convert files from or to DOS text mode
using tools specifically created to do that job, for instance, d2u and
u2d from the cygutils package.
</para>
<para>It is rather easy for the porter of a Unix package to fix the source
code by supplying the appropriate file processing mode switches to the
open/fopen functions.  Treat all text files as text and treat all binary
files as binary.  To be specific, you can select binary mode by adding
<literal>O_BINARY</literal> to the second argument of an
<literal>open</literal> call, or <literal>"b"</literal> to second argument
of an <literal>fopen</literal> call.  You can also call
<literal>setmode (fd, O_BINARY)</literal>.  To select text mode add
<literal>O_TEXT</literal> to the second argument of an <literal>open</literal>
call, or <literal>"t"</literal> to second argument of an
<literal>fopen</literal> call, or just call
<literal>setmode (fd, O_TEXT)</literal>.
</para>
<para>You can also avoid to change the source code at all by linking
an additional object file to your executable.  Cygwin provides various
object files in the <filename>/usr/lib</filename> directory which,
when linked to an executable, changes the default open modes of any
file opened within the executed process itself.  The files are
<screen>
  binmode.o      - Open all files in binary mode.
  textmode.o     - Open all files in text mode.
  textreadmode.o - Open all files opened for reading in text mode.
  automode.o     - Open all files opened for reading in text mode,
                   all files opened for writing in binary mode.
</screen>
</para>
<para>
<note>
  Linking against these object files does <emphasis>not</emphasis> change
  the open mode of files propagated to a process by its parent process,
  for instance, if the process is part of a shell pipe expression.
</note>
</para>
<para>Note that of the above flags only the "b" fopen flags are defined by
ANSI.  They exist under most flavors of Unix.  However, using O_BINARY,
O_TEXT, or the "t" flag is non-portable.
</para>
</answer></qandaentry>

<qandaentry id="faq.api.threads">
<question><para>Is the Cygwin library multi-thread-safe?</para></question>
<answer>

<para>Yes.
</para>
<para>There is also extensive support for 'POSIX threads', see the file
<literal>cygwin.din</literal> for the list of POSIX thread functions provided.
</para>
</answer></qandaentry>

<qandaentry id="faq.api.fork">
<question><para>How is fork() implemented?</para></question>
<answer>

<para>Cygwin fork() essentially works like a non-copy on write version
of fork() (like old Unix versions used to do).  Because of this it
can be a little slow.  In most cases, you are better off using the
spawn family of calls if possible.
</para>
<para>Here's how it works:
</para>
<para>Parent initializes a space in the Cygwin process table for child.
Parent creates child suspended using Win32 CreateProcess call, giving
the same path it was invoked with itself.  Parent calls setjmp to save
its own context and then sets a pointer to this in the Cygwin shared
memory area (shared among all Cygwin tasks).  Parent fills in the child's
.data and .bss subsections by copying from its own address space into
the suspended child's address space.  Parent then starts the child.
Parent waits on mutex for child to get to safe point.  Child starts and
discovers if has been forked and then longjumps using the saved jump
buffer.  Child sets mutex parent is waiting on and then blocks on
another mutex waiting for parent to fill in its stack and heap.  Parent
notices child is in safe area, copies stack and heap from itself into
child, releases the mutex the child is waiting on and returns from the
fork call.  Child wakes from blocking on mutex, recreates any mmapped
areas passed to it via shared area and then returns from fork itself.
</para>
</answer></qandaentry>

<qandaentry id="faq.api.globbing">
<question><para>How does wildcarding (globbing) work?</para></question>
<answer>

<para>If the DLL thinks it was invoked from a DOS style prompt, it runs a
`globber' over the arguments provided on the command line.  This means
that if you type <literal>LS *.EXE</literal> from DOS, it will do what you might
expect.
</para>
<para>Beware: globbing uses <literal>malloc</literal>.  If your application defines
<literal>malloc</literal>, that will get used.  This may do horrible things to you.
</para>
</answer></qandaentry>

<qandaentry id="faq.api.symlinks">
<question><para>How do symbolic links work?</para></question>
<answer>

<para>Cygwin knows of two ways to create symlinks.
</para>
<para>The default method generates link files with a magic header.  When you
open a file or directory that is a link to somewhere else, it opens the file
or directory listed in the magic header.  Because we don't want to have to
open every referenced file to check symlink status, Cygwin marks symlinks
with the system attribute.  Files without the system attribute are not
checked.  Because remote samba filesystems do not enable the system
attribute by default, symlinks do not work on network drives unless you
explicitly enable this attribute or use the second method to create symlinks.
</para>

<para>The second method is enabled if `winsymlinks' is set in the environment
variable CYGWIN.
Using this method, Cygwin generates symlinks by creating Windows shortcuts.
Cygwin created shortcuts have a special header (which is in that way never
created by Explorer) and the R/O attribute set.  A DOS path is stored in
the shortcut as usual and the description entry is used to store the POSIX
path.  While the POSIX path is stored as is, the DOS path has perhaps to be
rearranged to result in a valid path.  This may result in a divergence
between the DOS and the POSIX path when symlinks are moved crossing mount
points.  When a user changes the shortcut, this will be detected by Cygwin
and it will only use the DOS path then.  While Cygwin shortcuts are shown
without the ".lnk" suffix in `ls' output, non-Cygwin shortcuts are shown
with the suffix.  However, both are treated as symlinks.
</para>

<para>Both, types of symlinks can live peacefully together since Cygwin
treats both as symlinks regardless of the setting of `(no)winsymlinks' in
the environment variable CYGWIN.
</para>
</answer></qandaentry>

<qandaentry id="faq.api.executables">
<question><para>Why do some files, which are not executables have the 'x' type.</para></question>
<answer>

<para>When working out the POSIX-style attribute bits on a file stored on
certain filesystems (FAT, FAT32), the library has to fill out some information
not provided by these filesystems.
</para>
<para>It guesses that files ending in .exe and .bat are executable, as are
ones which have a "#!" as their first characters.  This guessing doesn't
take place on filesystems providing real permission information (NTFS, NFS),
unless you switch the permission handling off using the mount flag "noacl"
on these filesystems.
</para>
</answer></qandaentry>

<qandaentry id="faq.api.secure">
<question><para>How secure is Cygwin in a multi-user environment?</para></question>
<answer>

<para>As of version 1.5.13, the Cygwin developers are not aware of any feature
in the cygwin dll that would allow users to gain privileges or to access
objects to which they have no rights under Windows. However there is no
guarantee that Cygwin is as secure as the Windows it runs on.  Cygwin
processes share some variables and are thus easier targets of denial of
service type of attacks.
</para>
</answer></qandaentry>

<qandaentry id="faq.api.net-functions">
<question><para>How do the net-related functions work?</para></question>
<answer>

<para>The network support in Cygwin is supposed to provide the POSIX API, not
the Winsock API.
</para>
<para>There are differences between the semantics of functions with the same
name under the API.
</para>
<para>E.g., the POSIX select system call can wait on a standard file handles
and handles to sockets.  The select call in Winsock can only wait on
sockets.  Because of this, the Cygwin dll does a lot of nasty stuff behind
the scenes, trying to persuade various Winsock/Win32 functions to do what
a Unix select would do.
</para>
<para>If you are porting an application which already uses Winsock, then
porting the application to Cygwin means to port the application to using
the POSIX net functions.  You should never mix Cygwin net functions with
direct calls to Winsock functions.  If you use Cygwin, use the POSIX API.
</para>
</answer></qandaentry>

<qandaentry id="faq.api.winsock">
<question><para>I don't want Unix sockets, how do I use normal Win32 winsock?</para></question>
<answer>

<para>You don't.  Look for the Mingw-w64 project to port applications using
native Win32/Winsock functions.  Cross compilers packages to build Mingw-w64
targets are available in the Cygwin distro.
</para>
</answer></qandaentry>

<qandaentry id="faq.api.versions">
<question><para>What version numbers are associated with Cygwin?</para></question>
<answer>

<para>Cygwin versioning is relatively complicated because of its status as a
shared library.  First of all, since October 1998 every Cygwin DLL has
been named <literal>cygwin1.dll</literal> and has a 1 in the release name.
Additionally, there are DLL major and minor numbers that correspond to
the name of the release, and a release number. In other words,
cygwin-2.4.1-1 is <literal>cygwin1.dll</literal>, major version 2, minor
version 4, release 1.  -1 is a subrelease number required by the distro
versioning scheme.  It's not actually part of the Cygwin DLL version number.
</para>
<para>The <literal>cygwin1.dll</literal> major version number gets incremented
only when a change is made that makes existing software incompatible. For
example, the first major version 5 release, cygwin-1.5.0-1, added 64-bit
file I/O operations, which required many libraries to be recompiled and
relinked.  The minor version changes every time we make a new backward
compatible Cygwin release available.  There is also a
<literal>cygwin1.dll</literal> release version number.  The release number
is only incremented if we update an existing release in a way that does not
effect the DLL (like a missing header file).
</para>
<para>There are also Cygwin API major and minor numbers.  The major number
tracks important non-backward-compatible interface changes to the API.
An executable linked with an earlier major number will not be compatible
with the latest DLL.  The minor number tracks significant API additions
or changes that will not break older executables but may be required by
newly compiled ones.
</para>
<para>Then there is a shared memory region compatibility version number.  It is
incremented when incompatible changes are made to the shared memory
region or to any named shared mutexes, semaphores, etc.  For more exciting
Cygwin version number details, check out the
<literal>/usr/include/cygwin/version.h</literal> file.
</para>
</answer></qandaentry>

<qandaentry id="faq.api.timezone">
<question><para>Why isn't timezone set correctly?</para></question>
<answer>

<para><emphasis role='bold'>(Please note: This section has not yet been updated for the latest net release.)</emphasis>
</para>
<para>Did you explicitly call tzset() before checking the value of timezone?
If not, you must do so.
</para>
</answer></qandaentry>

<qandaentry id="faq.api.mouse">
<question><para>Is there a mouse interface?</para></question>
<answer>

<para>If you're using X then use the X API to handle mouse events.
In a Windows console window you can enable and capture mouse events
using the xterm escape sequences for mouse events.
</para>
</answer></qandaentry>
</qandadiv>