/de/conout (was: Looking for the 'stdout' of a Windows application)

[Andy Koppe]

2009/12/18 Marc Girod:
>> the problem is that cleartool is written for Windows
>> thus uses /dev/conout
>>
> I can see /dev/conout, but what can I do with it?

It won't literally be using /dev/conout, because that's a Cygwin
wrapper round a Windows concept.

Cleartool is doing either of two things:
- Use CreateFile("CONOUT$", ...) and then call WriteFile or
WriteConsole to write stuff to it. CONOUT$ is a special Windows
filename that provides access to the output side of the console that a
process is attached to. That console may be an invisible one created
by the 'run' tool or Cygwin DLL itself. No matter, the output
certainly won't appear in xterm or emacs.
-  Call WriteConsole on its stdout handle. When run in xterm or emacs,
the stdout handle will be a pipe (as part of Cygwin's pty
implementation), and a WriteConsole call on that will fail. Again, no
output.

There's nothing you can do about this apart from running cleartool in
an actual console or a console wrapper such as ttyfier (if it worked)
or http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/.

Andy

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