Re: [PATCH] Allow overriding the home directory via the HOME variable

[Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin@cygwin.com>]

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On Sep 16 15:06, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> 	* uinfo.cc (cygheap_pwdgrp::get_home): Offer an option in
> 	nsswitch.conf that let's the environment variable HOME (or
> 	HOMEDRIVE & HOMEPATH, or USERPROFILE) define the home
> 	directory.
> 
> 	* ntsec.xml: Document the `env` schema.
> 
> Detailed comments:
> 
> In the context of Git for Windows, it is a well-established technique
> to let the `$HOME` variable define where the current user's home
> directory is, falling back to `$HOMEDRIVE$HOMEPATH` and `$USERPROFILE`.
> 
> The idea is that we want to share user-specific settings between
> programs, whether they be Cygwin, MSys2 or not.  Unfortunately, we
> cannot blindly activate the "db_home: windows" setting because in some
> setups, the user's home directory is set to a hidden directory via an
> UNC path (\\share\some\hidden\folder$) -- something many programs
> cannot handle correctly.

-v, please.  Which applications can't handle that?  Why do we have to
care?

> The established technique is to allow setting the user's home directory
> via the environment variables mentioned above.  This has the additional
> advantage that it is much faster than querying the Windows user database.

But it's wrong.  We discussed this a couple of times on the Cygwin ML.
The underlying functionality generically implements the passwd entries.
Your "env" setting will return the same $HOME setting in the pw_dir
field for every user account.  All user accounts will have the same home
dir as your current user.  And the value is unreliable, too.  If another
user logs in, all accounts will have another $HOME, the one from the now
logged in user.  This is so wrong and potentially dangerous that I don't
think this belongs into Cygwin, sorry.


Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen                  Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
Cygwin Maintainer                 cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Red Hat

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