From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 3811 invoked by alias); 22 Apr 2008 08:26:00 -0000 Received: (qmail 3798 invoked by uid 22791); 22 Apr 2008 08:26:00 -0000 X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from dessent.net (HELO dessent.net) (69.60.119.225) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.31) with ESMTP; Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:25:31 +0000 Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=dessent.net) by dessent.net with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1JoDoW-0007gz-Dp; Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:25:20 +0000 Message-ID: <480DA0EA.C5601934@dessent.net> Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:26:00 -0000 From: Brian Dessent Reply-To: cygwin-apps@cygwin.com X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=F6rg?= Schaible CC: cygwin-apps@cygwin.com Subject: Re: [HEADSUP] Let's start a Cygwin 1.7 release area References: <20080415090849.GZ23852@calimero.vinschen.de> <20080415141730.GA21313@ednor.casa.cgf.cx> <20080415154400.GL23852@calimero.vinschen.de> <20080415175923.GA21976@ednor.casa.cgf.cx> <20080415183856.GM23852@calimero.vinschen.de> <4804FB2D.6040802@byu.net> <4805645E.63ED0505@dessent.net> <20080416084447.GN23852@calimero.vinschen.de> <20080421140428.GA7301@calimero.vinschen.de> <20080421174811.GZ23852@calimero.vinschen.de> <20080421201510.GE23852@calimero.vinschen.de> <480D7F83.300AE579@dessent.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-IsSubscribed: yes Mailing-List: contact cygwin-apps-help@cygwin.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk Sender: cygwin-apps-owner@cygwin.com List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Mail-Followup-To: cygwin-apps@cygwin.com X-SW-Source: 2008-04/txt/msg00268.txt.bz2 J=F6rg Schaible wrote: > > That reminds me of something... I've always been a bit annoyed that > > people always resort to manually editing the registry to > > remove Cygwin, > > when umount is the documented and preferred method. But now, we will > > have no such utility to suggest and so to remove Cygwin the > > user will be > > forced to use regedit. >=20 > regtool remove {HKLM,HKCU}\Software\Cygwin\??? I suppose I didn't state my point very well. Yes, there are Cygwin tools for manipulating the registry. But the registry is an implementation detail, and you should not need to know anything about registry keys to uninstall Cygwin. At the moment this can be accomplished via "umount -A" (and "cygrunsrv -R") with zero knowledge of where the mount table happens to be implemented, or that there even is a registry. With the mount table no longer stored in the registry, we will have no way around saying "you must remove such-and-such key from the registry." This is bad, IMHO. A separate issue is that even if we document a proper procedure for removing Cygwin (as we currently do in the FAQ), users often don't read manuals and just plunge in and try to delete stuff. They fail because they forgot to stop services first, or because they don't understand file ACLs. By adding a new key in the registry we make it increasingly likely that in their fervor to dive in and delete things without reading docs they will miss yet another step. I want to finally solve this for good by making a program that encapsulates all this knowledge so that they don't have to RTFM, and so that they just have a nice thing to click on like every other well-behaved Windows program. I think it's been a requested feature more than once. Brian