Very Computer

Hello all,

Sorry about the crosspost... but I need input from both sides of the
house on this one.

I'm porting an application from UNIX to NT using Nutcracker to handle
the UNIX calls.  What I'm looking for is an NT version of sh,
bash,zsh,csh,or ksh - basically any UNIX shell will do if it does the
following:
1) runs under NT

2) silently translates references to /dev/null to nul:

3) allows me to build and execute files that *don't end in .exe* or
.obj, etc.  (i.e. if I compile foo.c to an executable, I don't want to
have to call it by specifying foo.exe - the extension is killing me!)

4) handles anything I haven't run into yet because I'm so new to NT -
the preceding items are obvious ones; there may be issues I haven't
even found yet.

Question: does a shell like I want exist or am I smokin' crack ;-)
wishing for it?  Is it feasible to build if it doesn't?  I'm totally
new to the NT world and don't know its limitations - please flame me
if this is a stupid question ;-).  I basically need a shell under NT
that's savvy to the differences between NT and UNIX and "does the
right thing(tm)".

I'm using the korn shell the Nutcracker package comes with, but it's a
*long* way from being what I need!

lists due to nntp limitations at my place of employment (which is not where
I posted this from).  

Background:
I'm trying to run a GNU autoconfigure configuration script on the NT
box.  This configuration script figures out where everything is (on a
UNIX box anyway) and how to build an application on the the current
architecture - you've used this before if you've ever compiled a UNIX
program (you type "configure", then make...).

The problem is that the configure script will call make, which builds
an executable (conftest for example), then the script tries to run the
conftest program named conftest (not conftest.exe) and doesn't find
it.  The test fails.

I also have to manually go into the configuration script and change
references to /dev/null to nul:.

Long story short, I'm getting *really bad* makefiles generated - the
system doesn't know where standard includes are, whether it can use a
particular form of the time structure, etc.  Bad News.

I've got to get the makefiles generated as closely to the UNIX
versions as possible because we support our product on about 10
different UNIXes and want to keep as near identical a source tree as
possible.

Anyone done this kind of thing before?

Whew! I owe you one if you're still reading to this point! :-).

Many many thanks to anyone who can provide assistance,

Rgds,

Bret

--
 ____________________________________________________________________________
 Bret A. Schuhmacher              

 (214) 684-2410                               fault by my own.
 Northern Telecom Research, Richardson, TX

              If you didn't get caught, did you really do it?
 ____________________________________________________________________________

Till now, I've found:

        * bash (in cygnus; http://www.cygnus.com)
        * ms_sh (lot of sites. but everywhere binaries for
all operating systems but NT (the binary for DOS32 is almost usable,
but it refuses to run win NT apps))

        * sh in Win NT Resource Kit Utilities

ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-public/reskit/nt35/

        (ix86 is a 7 Mb package, I haven't tried it)

Quote:> 2) silently translates references to /dev/null to nul:

Quote:> 3) allows me to build and execute files that *don't end in .exe* or
> .obj, etc.  (i.e. if I compile foo.c to an executable, I don't want to
> have to call it by specifying foo.exe - the extension is killing me!)

Quote:> 4) handles anything I haven't run into yet because I'm so new to NT -
> the preceding items are obvious ones; there may be issues I haven't
> even found yet.
> if this is a stupid question ;-).  I basically need a shell under NT
> that's savvy to the differences between NT and UNIX and "does the
> right thing(tm)".

        There are problems anyway:

        The documentation is outdated, so I haven't found anything
about the NT oddities (for instance, where bash looks for its
startup files, where /etc/termcap should go, etc)

        In my machine, (win NT 4.0), every time I bring the
command window to the front (with a mouse click), a '[' appears
at the bash command line (!!)

        When I reach //D/dir1, "cd .." doesn't work; but
"cd //D/dir2" works fine.

        And another important question:

        There is any replacement to the program which creates
the window where the command interpreter runs ?(I still don't know
the name of the actual program, sorry). If I could use something
similar to a xterm perhaps I'd like NT a little more...

Quote:> Whew! I owe you one if you're still reading to this point! :-).

PS:
        I guess you have found it already; if not, look for 'vim' at
http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/vim/

--
 J.A. Gutierrez E.   /    http://www.cps.unizar.es/~spd

        They call it stormy monday / But Tuesday's just as bad
       Lord and Wednesday's worse / And Thursday's oh so sad
     (T.Bone Walker)

: the UNIX calls.  What I'm looking for is an NT version of sh,
: bash,zsh,csh,or ksh - basically any UNIX shell will do if it does the
: following:

As a unix user that has to use DOS a lot, I use the MKS toolkit.  I have
a really old version that includes the standard utilities and a korn shell.
The version I own doesn't do all that you describe, but you might want
to see if a current release will help you.  I think their home-page is at
http://www.mks.com.

Good luck with this,
  Vic.