Portability problems fixed by Gnulib:
@itemize
@item
+This function is missing on some platforms:
+MSVC 9.
+@item
Some platforms start the child with closed stdin or stdout if the
standard descriptors were closed in the parent:
Cygwin 1.5.x.
Portability problems not fixed by Gnulib:
@itemize
@item
-This function is missing on some platforms:
-MSVC 9.
+On native Windows platforms, this functions terminates the current process
+with exit code 127 if the environment variable @code{COMSPEC} is not set.
@item
Some platforms mistakenly set the close-on-exec bit, then if it is
cleared by the application, the platform then leaks file descriptors