201406.19

Windows GUI apps: Bad file descriptor. (or how to convert a GUI app into a console app for easy debugging)

Lately I've been neck-deep in embedding. Currently, I'm building a portable (hopefully) version of Turtl's core features in ECL.

Problem is, when embedding turtl-core into Node-webkit or Firefox, any output that ECL writes to STDOUT triggers:

C operation (write) signaled an error. C library explanation: Bad file descriptor.

Well it turns out Windows doesn't let you write to STDOUT unless a console is available, and even if using msys, it doesn't create a console for GUI apps. So here's a tool (in lisp, of course) that will let you convert an executable between GUI and console.

Seems to work great. Special thanks to death.