Copyright (C) 1999, 2000 Internet Software Consortium.

See COPYRIGHT in the source root or http://www.isc.org/copyright for terms.

$Id: windows-nt,v 1.5 2000/08/01 01:18:18 tale Exp $

Windows NT Portability Notes

OVERVIEW

A primary goal in the overall design of BIND9 was to isolate functions

that were specific to operating systems from those that are available

with ANSI C. Even though development was being done on Unix-like

machines, the main intention was that a Windows NT port could be done

with far less hassle if the incompatible bits were encapsulated into

their own dedicated modules. A libisc API was designed for each

operating system feature that was needed, and initial implementations

of those APIs were done for the various Unix operating systems. Some

of the APIs have been implemented in Win32, but not yet all.

The target Windows NT build environment was specified as having nmake

and the Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 compiler, but explicitly _not_ having

Cygwin or any other external portability package, because we wanted to

keep the prerequisites as minimal as possible.

In the source tree, the Unix implementations for the OS APIs are in a

"unix" subdirectory of lib/isc, while the thread APIs based on POSIX

threads are in lib/isc/pthreads. The Windows versions of the APIs are

in lib/isc/win32.

COMPILING

XXX expand this section

To build a kit for Windows NT, run util/nt-kit while in the top level

directory of the BIND9 sources. Its usage is:

util/nt-kit [-zip|-nozip] [remotedest [localdest]]

where "remotedest" is the path under which the sources will be

compiled on the NT machine, and "localdest" is where the munged

source tree will be placed on the local machine in preparation for

mounting/zipping/whatever to get it to the remote machine.

The default remotedest is g:/proj/bind9-nt, because that suits my

environment and I'm the one working on this. Use forward slashes when

specifying the remote path.

The default localdest is ../bind9-nt.

A zip archive named "bind9-nt.zip" can be created in the parent

directory of "localdest" if the -zip flag is specified; otherwise,

none is made by default.

...XXX describe what nt-kit does

...XXX config.status.win32, config.h.win32

MODULES

App

This module defines several functions that are useful for writing an

application that uses the ISC library. Bob Halley originally said,

"The main reason I wrote it was to help with the sometimes difficult

problems that occur when you try to do a controlled shutdown of a

multithreaded application. This scheme [using isc_app_start/

isc_app_run/isc_app_finish] will allow an application to use the

as-yet-unwritten single-threaded version of the ISC library without

any source code changes." XXX It has not yet been implemented for

Win32.

Condition

This module provides compatibility with the pthread_cond_* functions

of POSIX, which can be used to synchronize threads based on a

condition variable.

Dir

This module implements the directory scanning routines isc_dir_open,

isc_dir_read and isc_dir_close, used to iterate over the filenames in

a directory. XXX It also implements isc_dir_chdir to set the current

directory, but this function has not yet been written for Win32.

File

The File module is for functions that access and/or modify operating

system information about files. XXX It has not yet been written for Win32.

Filelock

This module implements the pthreads functions flockfile, funlockfile

and getc_unlocked, which synchronize stdio calls from multiple

threads. XXX It has not yet been written for Win32. Or for Unix

for that matter. Merge into File?

Interfaceiter

This module implements the isc_interfaceiter_first, _next, _current

and _destroy functions to list all of the network interfaces on a

machine. XXX It has not yet been written for Win32.

Ipv6

XXX It has not yet been written for Win32.

Net

XXX It has not yet been written for Win32.

Once

This module ensures that a particular function, such as an

initialization routine, is only executed once, ensuring that any other

threads that need to have the target function executed before they can

work are blocked until the target function has completely finished.

Socket

XXX It has not yet been written for Win32.

Stdtime

This module defines isc_stdtime_get, which stores the number of

seconds since 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 UTC in an isc_stdtime_t variable.

Thread

This module provides the isc_thread_create and isc_thread_join

functions, which behave like the POSIX Thread routines pthread_create

and pthread_join. XXX It also defines isc_thread_self to return the id of

the calling thread.

Time

This module defines several time management routines, such getting the

current time, adding or subtracting an interval, finding the

difference between two times, or simply determining whether one time

is earlier than another.