Workaround for opening file streams using wide string paths on old versions of MinGW

[rikyoz]

On old MinGW versions, opening file streams using wide string paths is not supported. This basically makes it impossible to use ghc::filesystem's streams for opening files with a Unicode character in the path since, by default, the narrow path string (UTF-8 encoded) gets interpreted by Windows using the system codepage (unless you force the program to use UTF-8 via a manifest file).

Example:

#include <iostream> #include <Windows.h> #include "ghc/filesystem.hpp" namespace fs = ghc::filesystem; constexpr auto path_str = L"αρχείο.txt"; auto main() -> int { std::cout << "System codepage: " << GetACP() << std::endl; const auto path = fs::path{ path_str }; { fs::ofstream ofs{ path, std::ios::binary }; ofs << "hello world!" << std::endl; } std::cout << "File exists: " << std::boolalpha << fs::exists( path ) << std::endl; }

Output:

However, old versions of MinGW might support the _wsopen_s function, a Microsoft extension that allows opening a file using a wide C string path. This, together with an internal function of libstdc++ (__gnu_cxx::stdio_filebuf), can be used to implement a workaround.

The workaround is used only if libstdc++ doesn't natively support opening file streams using wide string paths (#172), which is the preferred way on recent versions of MinGW.

Output with the workaround:

I tested it with both MinGW 7 and 8, which do not support GHC_HAS_FSTREAM_OPEN_WITH_WCHAR, but support _wsopen_s.

As a side note, I had to modify the CMake files so that the -Wa,-mbig-obj parameter is passed to all the test targets; otherwise, MinGW fails while linking the executables.

I hope everything is ok!