On Jun 27, 2014, at 8:55 AM, Jeff Sheen <jeff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> On 27 Jun 2014, at 02:39, Bob Friesenhahn <bfriesen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >>> On Thu, 26 Jun 2014, Jeff Sheen wrote: >>> >>> Is it expected behaviour that GNU Autotools are incompatible with some file systems natively supported by the OS? >> >> FAT32 provides only one second file timestamp resolution. That can cause significant problems for modern computers which often perform several steps in one second. A test to see if a file has changed may fail to obtain the correct results. >> > N.B. despite FAT's age, and subsequent flaws, it is still the de facto standard for portable drives. > > This is because FAT is the only file system fully supported by all modern operating systems. > > I run a multi-OS development environment, with a spread of tools across OSX and Windows. I wanted to migrate away from using FAT on my shared data partition, but found no other viable options. The process of testing alternative file systems was extensive, and meticulous. I spent weeks trying out NTFS and HFS partitions, with different combinations of drivers in both operating systems. > > Ultimately, it is partisan nonsense that the only file system that can be agreed on is FAT, but that is the reality. Patient: It hurts when I do this. Doctor: Well, then don't do that! There really are many, many more elegant solutions than sharing files using FAT! - use a NAS with a proper filesystem; - mount a proper filesystem to one server and then run NFS on that server so that client machines can access it; - use SMB on windows and Samba on Unix to cross mount a NTFS share; - sychronize shared files using DropBox or Box.net or OwnCloud etc; - replicate the filesystem across architectures and synchronize with rsync or git or mercurial or bzr; - create a TrueCrypt volume if you're moving a single physical drive between machines; - or a PKZip volume which also preserves metadata far better than FAT; And that's just the ones I could brainstorm in the time it took me to type this up, there are surely many others. HTH, -- Gary V. Vaughan (gary AT gnu DOT org)
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail
_______________________________________________ Autoconf mailing list Autoconf@xxxxxxx https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/autoconf
