bzr.bat splaps all win98 users immediately in the face

[John Arbash Meinel]

James Blackwell wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2006 at 03:08:38PM -0500, Robert J. Cristel wrote:
>> C:\Python24\Scripts>type bzr.bat
>> @C:\Python24\python.exe C:\Python24\Scripts\bzr %*
>>
>> C:\Python24\Scripts>bzr.bat
>> bzr: ERROR: unknown command '*'
>>
>> C:\Python24\Scripts>
>>
>> C:\Python24\Scripts>
>>
>> Why?
>>> Windows NT 4 introduced a set of new features for command line parameters:
>>> %* 	  	will return all command line parameters following %0
> 
> 
> I know that Windows 2000 has it. I'm unable to verify that NT4 has it. Bzr
> is telling you though that it got "*" for an argument, which implies to me
> that NT 4 doesn't have the feature. I suggest that you test with this
> standalone batch script
> 
> test.bat:
>   echo I got:%*
> 
> C..> test.bat hello world
> 
> The results may be illuminating.  By the way, newer versions of bzr have
> command aliases which may help you out of the problem that you're in.
> 
> Regards,
> James
> 

Actually, the problem is that he is on Windows 98, which doesn't have
anything from the NT line. So $* is illegal in win98.

Now officially, we don't support Win9x platforms. I realize we shouldn't
be overly hostile towards it, though.

All he is really asking is that we change our default .bat file to be:

"c:\Path\To\python.exe" "C:\Path\To\bzr" $1 $2 $3 $4 $5 $6 $7 $8 $9

(I don't believe that the Win9x batch processor can handle more than 9
arguments).

It is a small change, and if it works for him, then we might as well do it.

That said, if we run into any other major problems (like the fact that
Win9x support for unicode is very poor, and bzr uses unicode
extensively), I don't expect we will do a lot of work to make bzr run on
Win98.

Can you let us know if changing the batch file makes bzr work for you?
Otherwise there isn't much point in adding the fix, as it then limits
other windows people to only 9 arguments. (Which is probably sufficient
in the common case, but still a limitation).

Oh, and probably it needs to be:

"$1" "$2" "$3"

Can you confirm that as well? I know my colleague tried to do:
bzr commit -m 'some text'

But it turns out that the Windows XP shell doesn't treat single quotes
as special.

(Which brings up another point, that the message 'No changes to commit'
hides the problem, and probably when a file spec is given we should give
'No changes to "foo" to commit')

John
=:->

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