275644 - OS conformance - unix vs. dos linefeeds

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox Build System :: General, defect)

Description

[Matthew Woehlke]

Windows versions of Moz apps (FF and TB observed, may also affect others) write
plaintext files with UNIX-style line feeds instead of DOS-style CRLF as
expected. Presumably affects all M$ operating systems, but is correct behavior
on *nix.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Run a Moz application (e.g. FF, TB)
2. Open chrome://chrome.rdf (or any plaintext file written by the aforementioned
program) in Notepad.exe

Actual results:
File is a mess of wrapped lines and 'garbage' characters.

Expected results:
File has linefeeds that conform to OS specs.

Comment 1

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

This has nothing to do with OS conformance. Our whole build system is built on
UNIX linefeeds and that's not going to change.

-> WONTFIX

Comment 2

[Matthew Woehlke]

I don't get it. If you're going to write text files (as oposed to binary files),
what's the problem writing properly formatted text files? Or for that matter,
why not just open the files in text mode and let the system handle the translation?

Comment 3

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

Since Firefox, Thunderbird and other Mozilla-based apps are cross-platform by
nature, our build system and in the end our linefeed format also has to be
cross-platform. We use UNIX linefeeds purely for historical reasons, since our
build system is UNIX-based.

Changing the linefeed would have to be done during or after building the
relevant application, which would prolong our build process and give us no
serious benefit, which is why this is not an option.