cygdrive prefix

cygdrive prefix

[Vincent R.]

Hi,

Is there any good reason to force user to use /cygdrive/ before accessing
a drive ?
I am asking it because I regularly switch from cygwin to mingw and some
simple script needs
to be adapted every time.
Wouldn't be easier to access directly to a drive without entering
cygdrive? Is there any reason for that ?



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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Dave Korn]

Vincent R. wrote:

> Wouldn't be easier to access directly to a drive without entering
> cygdrive? Is there any reason for that ?

  Go ahead.  You can create a mountpoint anywhere you like, so if you want
MinGW-style /c, /d, etc., just use the 'mount' command or edit the fstab.

    cheers,
      DaveK


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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Andrew DeFaria]

Vincent R. wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Is there any good reason to force user to use /cygdrive/ before 
> accessing a drive ?
Considering you aren't forced to use /cygdrive/ (see mount(1m)) no...
> I am asking it because I regularly switch from cygwin to mingw and 
> some simple script needs to be adapted every time.
Huh? Can't your script sense you're using Cygwin or Mingw?
> Wouldn't be easier to access directly to a drive without entering 
> cygdrive? Is there any reason for that ?
What would be your proposal for a POSIX path to indicate you are now 
accessing a Windows drive by letter? "/cygdrive/" is just a string 
indicating this. You can change it with mount(1m). Personally I (ab)use 
/dev...
-- 
Andrew DeFaria <http://defaria.com>
Never raise your hands to your kids. It leaves your groin unprotected.


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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Vincent R.]

On Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:02:19 -0700, Andrew DeFaria <Andrew@DeFaria.com>
wrote:
> Vincent R. wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Is there any good reason to force user to use /cygdrive/ before 
>> accessing a drive ?
> Considering you aren't forced to use /cygdrive/ (see mount(1m)) no...
>> I am asking it because I regularly switch from cygwin to mingw and 
>> some simple script needs to be adapted every time.
> Huh? Can't your script sense you're using Cygwin or Mingw?
>> Wouldn't be easier to access directly to a drive without entering 
>> cygdrive? Is there any reason for that ?
> What would be your proposal for a POSIX path to indicate you are now 
> accessing a Windows drive by letter? "/cygdrive/" is just a string 
> indicating this. You can change it with mount(1m). Personally I (ab)use 
> /dev...

Ok I see your point but I find it weird to complicate things by adding
/cygdrive.
Maybe some people are crazy enough to create folders with one letter at
filesystem root
but that's not my case so typing /c means I want  to access C drive.


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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Andrew Schulman]

> > Wouldn't be easier to access directly to a drive without entering
> > cygdrive? Is there any reason for that ?
> 
>   Go ahead.  You can create a mountpoint anywhere you like, so if you want
> MinGW-style /c, /d, etc., just use the 'mount' command or edit the fstab.

Personally I like /win/c etc., but sure, I guess you could put

none / cygdrive binary,posix=0,user 0 0

into /etc/fstab and get /c, /d, etc.

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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Andrew DeFaria]

Vincent R. wrote:
>
> Ok I see your point but I find it weird to complicate things by adding 
> /cygdrive.
/cygdrive is just the string of characters the coder implementing that 
code choose to use. Be thankful. He could have choose 
/ThisIsThePathIWantedToUseToIndicateWindowsDrives! ;-)
> Maybe some people are crazy enough to create folders with one letter 
> at filesystem root
There's no insanity required to decide to create a folder at the root of 
the drive that contains only one letter. *YOU* just think that doesn't 
make sense while others think it does.
> but that's not my case so typing /c means I want to access C drive
Sorry it doesn't work that way but you can make it work that way as 
David points out.
-- 
Andrew DeFaria <http://defaria.com>
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?


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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Thomas Wolff]

Vincent R. wrote:

> Wouldn't be easier to access directly to a drive without entering
> cygdrive? Is there any reason for that ?

Dave Korn wrote:
>  Go ahead.  You can create a mountpoint anywhere you like, so if you want
> MinGW-style /c, /d, etc., just use the 'mount' command or edit the fstab.

Or even simpler just softlinks as I do.


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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Thorsten Kampe]

* Vincent R. (Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:08:59 +0200)
> 
> On Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:02:19 -0700, Andrew DeFaria <Andrew@DeFaria.com>
> wrote:
> > Vincent R. wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> Is there any good reason to force user to use /cygdrive/ before 
> >> accessing a drive ?
> > Considering you aren't forced to use /cygdrive/ (see mount(1m)) no...
> >> I am asking it because I regularly switch from cygwin to mingw and 
> >> some simple script needs to be adapted every time.
> > Huh? Can't your script sense you're using Cygwin or Mingw?
> >> Wouldn't be easier to access directly to a drive without entering 
> >> cygdrive? Is there any reason for that ?
> > What would be your proposal for a POSIX path to indicate you are now 
> > accessing a Windows drive by letter? "/cygdrive/" is just a string 
> > indicating this. You can change it with mount(1m). Personally I (ab)use 
> > /dev...
> 
> Ok I see your point but I find it weird to complicate things by adding
> /cygdrive.

It's not complicating things. To the contrary: it's simplifying. Right 
now the structure in / is a neat subset of a Unix / root. If you had all 
these a, b, c, d, e, k, z folders in between (not to mention any network 
drives) that would look a whole lot less good.

It's more or less the same reason why you shouldn't install Cygwin 
directly to C:\ (but to C:\cygwin): so you don't have the Cygwin and the 
Windows root folder structure mixed.

Thorsten


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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Andy Koppe]

2009/9/16 Thorsten Kampe
> you shouldn't install Cygwin
> directly to C:\ (but to C:\cygwin): so you don't have the Cygwin and the
> Windows root folder structure mixed.

And where exactly is the harm in that? Apple certainly don't see a
problem with it, with the likes of /Applications and /Users living
happily alongside /bin and /var. Actually it makes for a much more
integrated Cygwin user experience not to have to mentally switch
between different roots and add those \cygwin and /cygdrive (or
whatever) prefixes when accessing stuff from the other side of the
fence.

Andy

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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Dave Korn]

Andy Koppe wrote:
> 2009/9/16 Thorsten Kampe
> whatever) prefixes when accessing stuff from the other side of the
> fence.

  Never mind the fence, what colour are we going to paint the bikeshed?

  This is purely a matter of taste.  To each their own and de gustibus non
disputandum est.

    cheers,
      DaveK


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RE: cygdrive prefix

[Buchbinder, Barry (NIH/NIAID) [E]]

Vincent R. sent the following at Wednesday, September 16, 2009 12:09 PM
>> Vincent R. wrote:
>>> Is there any good reason to force user to use /cygdrive/ before
>>> accessing a drive?
>
>Ok I see your point but I find it weird to complicate things by adding
>/cygdrive.  Maybe some people are crazy enough to create folders with one
>letter at filesystem root but that's not my case so typing /c means I
>want to access C drive.

I'm not sure that people have explicitly answered you original question.

Cygwin "out of the box":

To get to c:\windows:
	$ cd /cygdrive/c/windows
To get to c:\cygwin:
	$ cd /cygdrive/c/cygwin
or	$ cd /

Now do the following (in cygwin 1.5; I don't know how ver. 1.7 works)
(though you might want to add some other flags, e.g., -b or -u)

	$ mount --change-cygdrive-prefix "/"

To get to c:\windows
	$ cd /c/windows
To get to c:\cygwin
	$ cd /c/cygwin
or	$ cd /

Does that help?  It seems to me that you can get what you want.

You might want to read the following
  http://cygwin.com/faq/faq-nochunks.html#faq.using.accessing-drives
  http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using.html#using-pathnames
  http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using.html#mount-table
  http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using-utils.html#mount

- Barry
  Disclaimer: Statements made herein are not made on behalf of NIAID.

Re: cygdrive prefix

[Christopher Faylor]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 10:40:33PM +0100, Dave Korn wrote:
>Andy Koppe wrote:
>> 2009/9/16 Thorsten Kampe
>> whatever) prefixes when accessing stuff from the other side of the
>> fence.
>
>  Never mind the fence, what colour are we going to paint the bikeshed?

Please take this discussion to cygwin-bikeshed !

cgf

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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Linda Walsh]

Vincent R. wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Is there any good reason to force user to use /cygdrive/ before accessing
> a drive ?
> I am asking it because I regularly switch from cygwin to mingw and some
> simple script needs
> to be adapted every time.
> Wouldn't be easier to access directly to a drive without entering
> cygdrive? Is there any reason for that ?
----
Just set your cygdrive prefix to "" (null)
Then you can use /d/, /e/, and _usually_,  "/" = your root drive
...
Works REAL well, when you install cygwin in the root dir, since then all the
paths match up between cygwin and windows.

More than one windows app takes "/" as a path-sep, as well as "\" (Gvim for example).


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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Shaddy Baddah]

Hi,

Andy Koppe wrote:
> 2009/9/16 Thorsten Kampe
>   
>> you shouldn't install Cygwin
>> directly to C:\ (but to C:\cygwin): so you don't have the Cygwin and the
>> Windows root folder structure mixed.
>>     
>
> And where exactly is the harm in that? Apple certainly don't see a
> problem with it, with the likes of /Applications and /Users living
> happily alongside /bin and /var. Actually it makes for a much more
> integrated Cygwin user experience not to have to mentally switch
> between different roots and add those \cygwin and /cygdrive (or
> whatever) prefixes when accessing stuff from the other side of the
> fence.
>   
I don't run an Apple computer OS, but my observation is that they are
based around a packaging system called 'port'? If true, that
undermines your argument somewhat. Because then you are even with
Linux/most unices, which of course carefully drop all exes into bin,
libraries into lib, etc. In this case there is nothing wrong dropping
everything into a single bin,lib,.. dir as you say, because there is a
package management system there to hold manifests, handle collisions,
allow uninstalls etc. etc. But without a package management system,
you are asking for trouble.

In this case, although cygwin has a package management system, it is
not going to manage the non-cygwin stuff dropped into c:/bin,lib,
etc. And that means if a user goes and installs something like msys
under the same mode of thinking, they won't stand much chance of
getting support if they come running here to complain about make or
someother app behaving  unexpectedly because they've now got a /bin
directory tainted with non-cygwin exes. At least they would be very
unpopular for wasting the list's time.

Of course, if the user knows what they are doing, either implementing
their own package management functions or diligently acting as their
own package manager, there is no reason for having c:/ as cygwin root
not to work. It's just highly discouraged for the reasons I've given.

Regards,
Shaddy



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goldstar? Re: cygdrive prefix

[Christopher Faylor]

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 11:35:11AM +1000, Shaddy Baddah wrote:
>Hi,
>
>Andy Koppe wrote:
>> 2009/9/16 Thorsten Kampe
>>   
>>> you shouldn't install Cygwin
>>> directly to C:\ (but to C:\cygwin): so you don't have the Cygwin and the
>>> Windows root folder structure mixed.
>>>     
>>
>> And where exactly is the harm in that? Apple certainly don't see a
>> problem with it, with the likes of /Applications and /Users living
>> happily alongside /bin and /var. Actually it makes for a much more
>> integrated Cygwin user experience not to have to mentally switch
>> between different roots and add those \cygwin and /cygdrive (or
>> whatever) prefixes when accessing stuff from the other side of the
>> fence.
>>   
>I don't run an Apple computer OS, but my observation is that they are
>based around a packaging system called 'port'? If true, that
>undermines your argument somewhat. Because then you are even with
>Linux/most unices, which of course carefully drop all exes into bin,
>libraries into lib, etc. In this case there is nothing wrong dropping
>everything into a single bin,lib,.. dir as you say, because there is a
>package management system there to hold manifests, handle collisions,
>allow uninstalls etc. etc. But without a package management system,
>you are asking for trouble.
>
>In this case, although cygwin has a package management system, it is
>not going to manage the non-cygwin stuff dropped into c:/bin,lib,
>etc. And that means if a user goes and installs something like msys
>under the same mode of thinking, they won't stand much chance of
>getting support if they come running here to complain about make or
>someother app behaving  unexpectedly because they've now got a /bin
>directory tainted with non-cygwin exes. At least they would be very
>unpopular for wasting the list's time.
>
>Of course, if the user knows what they are doing, either implementing
>their own package management functions or diligently acting as their
>own package manager, there is no reason for having c:/ as cygwin root
>not to work. It's just highly discouraged for the reasons I've given.

Wow.  Nice summation of the reasons for the need for a c:\cygwin.

Can I get a goldstar here?

cgf

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Re: goldstar? Re: cygdrive prefix

[Mark J. Reed]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 9:44 PM, Christopher Faylor wrote:
[re: Shaddy Baddah]
> Wow.  Nice summation of the reasons for the need for a c:\cygwin.
>
> Can I get a goldstar here?

Indeed, a nice summary.

Let me dispel some misconceptions that piped up in the Apple
comparison: the two ways of thinking may live side by side in OS X,
and they coexist peacefully (some would say beautifully), but they
aren't really integrated in the sense being described here.

Mac-ish apps live in /Applications; UNIX-ish apps live in /bin (or
/usr/local/bin, or /opt/local/bin if you use MacPorts, or /sw/bin if
you use Fink, or...).

 Mac apps come as disk images (.dmg)'s usually containing packages
(.mpkg); UNIX apps are either manually installed, or managed via port
or fink (the latter of which uses apt behind the scenes).   There's no
grand unified packaging system.  In fact, if someone wants access to
all the goodies that are easily installable via MacPorts and Fink,
then there's a good chance they have two or three installations of
some shared libraries: one for the main OS and one for each of the
packaging systems.

If there's a Mac app to launch a UNIX program (e.g. Gimp.app), chances
are the UNIX binary it uses is completely separate copy that lives in
the app's folder in /Applications, even if there's a perfectly good
copy in a system bin directory.

If you navigate using the Finder (OS X equivalent of Windows
Explorer), the system directories like /bin and /etc don't even show
up.

Really, the two modes of operation don't talk to each other much. They
just share a filesystem.  It works because they mostly leave each
other alone.  There's no tradition in Mac land of creating a top-level
"bin" folder and putting things in there, because there was no command
line at all on the traditional Mac OS, so there was no point.  Which
means the sort of conflicts mentioned by Shaddy rarely arise.

-- 
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@gmail.com>

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Re: goldstar? Re: cygdrive prefix

[Shaddy Baddah]

Hi,

Before I start, I want to admit that I think I may have
misinterpreted Andy Koppe's email. I now see that Andy may have been
defending *not* demarcating the rest of the windows world with a
/cygdrive prefix by just having all c:/ subpaths accessabile directly
from the / prefix. That's not my style, but its an OK choice to have.

In my defence, when people advocate (or appear to advocate as in this
case) having a c:/bin,c:/lib,etc., I get the impression that they want
to unify the installation of all non-OS packages into the one
location. In which case I would still stand by my argument. If this is
not what you were advocating, I am sorry that I have misinterpreted
your post Andy (you can take my star away now, I wont mind :-) ).

Which leads me to this:

Mark J. Reed wrote:
<snip>
 > Really, the two modes of operation don't talk to each other much. They
 > just share a filesystem.  It works because they mostly leave each
 > other alone.  There's no tradition in Mac land of creating a top-level
 > "bin" folder and putting things in there, because there was no command
 > line at all on the traditional Mac OS, so there was no point.  Which
 > means the sort of conflicts mentioned by Shaddy rarely arise.

I'm a little confused? Wasn't I, by initial interpretation of Andy
Koppe's response, saying that having a /bin on Mac OS was ok because
it avoided the conflicts by being administered by MacPorts (that's the
correct name, thanks). In the same way most Linux distros do that with
dpkg,rpm,or other. Sure it could be administered by Fink or some other
package management system, but the point still stands, I wasn't saying
that there were conflicts on Mac OS at all.

Shaddy Baddah wrote:
 > I don't run an Apple computer OS, but my observation is that they are
 > based around a packaging system called 'port'? If true, that
 > undermines your argument somewhat. Because then you are even with
 > Linux/most unices, which of course carefully drop all exes into bin,
 > libraries into lib, etc. In this case there is nothing wrong dropping
 > everything into a single bin,lib,.. dir as you say, because there is a
 > package management system there to hold manifests, handle collisions,
 > allow uninstalls etc. etc. But without a package management system,
 > you are asking for trouble.

Anyway, I think I'll stop commenting on Mac OS now because truth be
told, I've had little experience with it.

Regards,
Shaddy


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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Andy Koppe]

2009/9/16 Dave Korn:
>> whatever) prefixes when accessing stuff from the other side of the
>> fence.
>
>  Never mind the fence, what colour are we going to paint the bikeshed?
>
>  This is purely a matter of taste.

Exactly. I didn't mean to suggest that Cygwin should go into C:\ by
default. And yes, I'm quite capable of not installing MingW into the
same place.

My real gripe is with setup telling me off about putting Cygwin in the
root dir ON EVERY SINGLE UPDATE.

Andy

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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Christopher Faylor]

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 06:18:21AM +0100, Andy Koppe wrote:
>2009/9/16 Dave Korn:
>>> whatever) prefixes when accessing stuff from the other side of the
>>> fence.
>>
>> ??Never mind the fence, what colour are we going to paint the bikeshed?
>>
>> ??This is purely a matter of taste.
>
>Exactly. I didn't mean to suggest that Cygwin should go into C:\ by
>default. And yes, I'm quite capable of not installing MingW into the
>same place.
>
>My real gripe is with setup telling me off about putting Cygwin in the
>root dir ON EVERY SINGLE UPDATE.

My real gripe is people who COMPLAIN ABOUT FREE SOFTWARE where they
HAVE THE SOURCE CODE.

That and capital letters.

cgf

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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Andy Koppe]

2009/9/17 Christopher Faylor:
>>My real gripe is with setup telling me off about putting Cygwin in the
>>root dir ON EVERY SINGLE UPDATE.
>
> My real gripe is people who COMPLAIN ABOUT FREE SOFTWARE where they
> HAVE THE SOURCE CODE.

Ah, that old lazy chestnut. Feedback not welcome. At least get a bug
tracker, so you can more efficiently ignore it.

Andy

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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Linda Walsh]

Andy Koppe wrote:
> 2009/9/17 Christopher Faylor:
>>> My real gripe is with setup telling me off about putting Cygwin in the
>>> root dir ON EVERY SINGLE UPDATE.
>> My real gripe is people who COMPLAIN ABOUT FREE SOFTWARE where they
>> HAVE THE SOURCE CODE.
> 
> Ah, that old lazy chestnut. Feedback not welcome. At least get a bug
> tracker, so you can more efficiently ignore it.
---
	Lots of things are free in life.  Doesn't mean we don't
wish things were different that others can change much more easily than
we can.  

	I do like the idea of a 'bugzilla.cygwin.com' though.
Then if I am posting about a problem, I don't have to wonder if
it will be taken as me reporting a 'bug', and why didn't I follow
the guidelines about including a dump.   I usually like to find out
if something is already known, or there's a known confusion that I
might be stumbling into, or whatever before I file a bug.  

	There's always the old saw about what I might think is
a bug is some intentional feature -- just working a bit odd
in some edge case.  Or there's the idea of 'collecting data points'
to see if anyone else has noticed anything strange with feature
"X" (as I often do strange things with feature "X" and don't know
if my experience is unique, rare, or common...etc...

	I certainly wouldn't suggest the default being in root,
it would be bad software vendor (RH parent company) policy.  OTOH,
at least the defaults are pretty sensible (I can just hit ENTER),
through the setup -- EXCEPT...at the end -- how many times do I
have to tell setup that I *STILL* don't want the icon on my desktop??!

	Having the source is pointless if it doesn't get integrated
back into the base, and last couple of times I tried to build it,
I ran into unexpected and unique errors because I don't have the exact
same setup as those who regularly do development on cygwin.  I might
be missing things they take for granted that any developer would have
OR I might have something that is interfering in some odd way.

	I know I have a chronic problem on linux with configure
scripts where they will die because 'config.h' or 'Makefile' have
been created with directories with the "proper", or expected,
content, in a file inside the directory.  That error has persisted
over fresh machine installs over multiple OS upgrades.  Really
weird when it happens, as no one seems to have experienced the same
problem -- and it's not tied to any one software package.  

	Weird.

-l

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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Linda Walsh]

Shaddy Baddah wrote:
> In this case, although cygwin has a package management system, it is
> not going to manage the non-cygwin stuff dropped into c:/bin,lib,
> etc. And that means if a user goes and installs something like msys
---
	I knew I had a good reason for thinking it would cause trouble
to try to install that on my Cygwin system.  I know Cygwin has a
good, integrated, 'unix' type feel, and adding 'warts' to it just
didn't seem like a great idea.  
	
	"msys" _seems_ to be a smallish (cf. to Cygwin) collection
of unix-like utils, ported to the windows world, while Cygwin is a 
“widely used Unix platform”, one of three on a list containing 
“Linux, Mac OS X, & Cygwin”.⁽¹⁾

	So why would I wanna break my 'platform'?
	If I catch an app messing w/my "bin" dir (et al), I'll
likely consider it an 'unfriendly', or 'ill behaved', 'app' -- at
least on my systems.  Of course I really don't like all the apps that
install into the 'window's 'bin' dir of /windows/system32, but that's
considered normal practice -- that and storing my 'user data' under
'prog' instead of under my 'profile'...just bad form.

	Though, now that I think about that, any of my changes in
/bin (& /usr, /etc...) are also outside of my 'home dir', so that's
a bit unsanitary of me (besides exposing me to lower backup frequency), but
to thoroughly cure that, I'd have to install cygwin under my profile dir.
Yuck!

	I suppose I should try to map "copies" of my root-level changes
(/etc/passwd, group.. some login scripts...etc) into my profile dir, or
at least setup a cron-job rsync, to run daily....

-l


 :-)

⁽¹⁾ - "_Fonts_&_Encodings_", Yannis Haralambous, O'Reilly, 2007, p489.


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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Thorsten Kampe]

* Andy Koppe (Wed, 16 Sep 2009 22:06:45 +0100)
> 2009/9/16 Thorsten Kampe
> > you shouldn't install Cygwin
> > directly to C:\ (but to C:\cygwin): so you don't have the Cygwin and the
> > Windows root folder structure mixed.
> 
> And where exactly is the harm in that? Apple certainly don't see a
> problem with it, with the likes of /Applications and /Users living
> happily alongside /bin and /var. Actually it makes for a much more
> integrated Cygwin user experience not to have to mentally switch
> between different roots and add those \cygwin and /cygdrive (or
> whatever) prefixes when accessing stuff from the other side of the
> fence.

Apple /is/ Unix (BSD). In the case of Cygwin, Cygwin is not (part of) 
Windows. Cygwin has its own root folder structure and Windows has its 
own. If you don't mind having a Windows "Temp" folder and a Cygwin 
"tmp" folder directly on C:\ then there is no harm.

Some people prefer keeping different things seperately. Like Cygwin 
stuff in C:\cygwin and not in C:\. Like having a, b, c, d, e, under 
/cygdrive and not under /. A matter of preference and definitely my 
preference.

Of course it's less "integrated" but Cygwin itself is not integrated 
into Windows that much. It doesn't use the user's temp folder. It 
doesn't use the OS' application folder. It doesn't use the user's 
profile folder as $HOME, etc.


Thorsten


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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Harald Joerg]

Linda Walsh writes:

> [...] OTOH, at least the defaults are pretty sensible ...

Pretty sensible, indeed.  I love /cygdrive as just another example of a
pretty sensible default.

> ... (I can just hit ENTER), through the setup ...

...and the default buttons in the GUI are always in the same place on
the screen, so if I happen to use a mouse I can just click through, no
need to move the mouse.  Not a big deal, maybe, but if so, why are so
many other installers missing it?

> ... -- EXCEPT...at the end -- how many times do I have to tell setup
> that I *STILL* don't want the icon on my desktop??!

I eventually got around that one.

I found that I do not want *any* icons on my desktop and switched them
off completely.  There is an option in the "Sort symbols" function of
the desktop.

And since then I completely fail to be annoyed by the mess of icons
which your average installer will drop on my desktop.  Most of them
don't even ask whether they should.
-- 
Cheers,
haj

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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Ralph Hempel]

Harald Joerg wrote:

>> ... -- EXCEPT...at the end -- how many times do I have to tell setup
>> that I *STILL* don't want the icon on my desktop??!
> 
> I eventually got around that one.
> 
> I found that I do not want *any* icons on my desktop and switched them
> off completely.  There is an option in the "Sort symbols" function of
> the desktop.

I'll help drive the final nail in the bikeshed and supply whatever
color of paint you want.

Use the commandline options for the 1.7 setup and you'll never have
to futz with the setup GUI again - ever.

Ralph


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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Larry Hall (Cygwin)]

On 09/17/2009 01:18 AM, Andy Koppe wrote:
> 2009/9/16 Dave Korn:
>>> whatever) prefixes when accessing stuff from the other side of the
>>> fence.
>>
>>   Never mind the fence, what colour are we going to paint the bikeshed?
>>
>>   This is purely a matter of taste.
>
> Exactly. I didn't mean to suggest that Cygwin should go into C:\ by
> default. And yes, I'm quite capable of not installing MingW into the
> same place.
>
> My real gripe is with setup telling me off about putting Cygwin in the
> root dir ON EVERY SINGLE UPDATE.

'setup.exe' is ever so stubborn about this.  We've tried talking to it and 
cajoling it.
We've even grounded it at times for doing this.  Nothing seems to work.  We had
planned to send it to a summer boot-camp for dastardly and defiant setup 
programs
but the weather was so bad it got canceled.  Anyone want to start a fund so we
can send 'setup.exe' to a good psychologist to cure this anti-social behavior?

-- 
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
216 Dalton Rd.                          (508) 893-9889 - FAX
Holliston, MA 01746

_____________________________________________________________________

A: Yes.
 > Q: Are you sure?
 >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
 >>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?

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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Christopher Faylor]

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 06:36:26AM +0100, Andy Koppe wrote:
>2009/9/17 Christopher Faylor:
>>>My real gripe is with setup telling me off about putting Cygwin in the
>>>root dir ON EVERY SINGLE UPDATE.
>>
>> My real gripe is people who COMPLAIN ABOUT FREE SOFTWARE where they
>> HAVE THE SOURCE CODE.
>
>Ah, that old lazy chestnut. Feedback not welcome. At least get a bug
>tracker, so you can more efficiently ignore it.

Yes, we are in standard territory.  You send a complaint to thousands of
people and I respond with the observation that you have the power to fix
the problem yourself.  There is nothing new to see here although it is
surprising to me that you, in particular, are in this territory since I
would have thought you were one of the people who "got it".

We do have a bugzilla tracker for setup.exe but it doesn't get checked
much since we don't really have a dedicated setup.exe maintainer
anymore.  We have various people like Dave Korn, Corinna, and me making
changes when we see obvious bugs but there isn't one person responsible
for setup.exe overall.

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?product=cygwin&component=setup.exe

(We did, at one point, have a plan for updating the bugzilla but it,
also, has fallen into disuse)

It would be nice if someone would go through the list and clean it up but
I'm not holding my breath.

In any event, we obviously HAVE made many changes to setup.exe and HAVE
accepted patches.  The most notable recent change is the one to search
for packages.  If you, or anyone, wants to help we appreciate it.

cgf

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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Jim Reisert AD1C]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 10:16 AM, Andrew Schulman
<schulman.andrew@epamail.epa.gov> wrote:

> Personally I like /win/c etc., but sure, I guess you could put
>
> none / cygdrive binary,posix=0,user 0 0
>
> into /etc/fstab and get /c, /d, etc.


There is a huge downside to this. I tried it.  It totally broke all my
projects using CVS, because /cygdrive no longer existed, and all my
CVS projects used /cygdrive/f/CVSROOT as the Root

So try/use at your own risk!  I think symbolic links are the way to go.

- Jim

-- 
Jim Reisert AD1C, <jjreisert@alum.mit.edu>, http://www.ad1c.us

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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Larry Hall (Cygwin)]

On 09/17/2009 12:32 PM, Jim Reisert AD1C wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 10:16 AM, Andrew Schulman
> <schulman.andrew@epamail.epa.gov>  wrote:
>
>> Personally I like /win/c etc., but sure, I guess you could put
>>
>> none / cygdrive binary,posix=0,user 0 0
>>
>> into /etc/fstab and get /c, /d, etc.
>
>
> There is a huge downside to this. I tried it.  It totally broke all my
> projects using CVS, because /cygdrive no longer existed, and all my
> CVS projects used /cygdrive/f/CVSROOT as the Root
>
> So try/use at your own risk!  I think symbolic links are the way to go.

While I'm not suggesting that people should reassign their "cygdrive" prefix
to "/", I think the problem you saw in your case is a result of having set
CVS up when your setting was still "cygdrive" and the disconnect you get
now that it isn't.  So I believe you'd see the same problem no matter what
you changed "cygdrive" to.  Obviously, as you point out, symbolic links are
a good alternative in this case.

-- 
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
216 Dalton Rd.                          (508) 893-9889 - FAX
Holliston, MA 01746

_____________________________________________________________________

A: Yes.
 > Q: Are you sure?
 >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
 >>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?

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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Eric Blake]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

According to Larry Hall (Cygwin) on 9/17/2009 12:53 PM:
> While I'm not suggesting that people should reassign their "cygdrive"
> prefix
> to "/", I think the problem you saw in your case is a result of having set
> CVS up when your setting was still "cygdrive" and the disconnect you get
> now that it isn't.  So I believe you'd see the same problem no matter what
> you changed "cygdrive" to.  Obviously, as you point out, symbolic links are
> a good alternative in this case.

Including 'ln -s / /cygdrive' after changing your mount point, so that /c
and /cygdrive/c still refer to the same place.

- --
Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well!

Eric Blake             ebb9@byu.net
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (Cygwin)
Comment: Public key at home.comcast.net/~ericblake/eblake.gpg
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iEYEARECAAYFAkqy04gACgkQ84KuGfSFAYDpNACdH4CYCBIZsflXxnVyRSwC5/Vd
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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Christopher Faylor]

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 06:25:44PM -0600, Eric Blake wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>According to Larry Hall (Cygwin) on 9/17/2009 12:53 PM:
>> While I'm not suggesting that people should reassign their "cygdrive"
>> prefix
>> to "/", I think the problem you saw in your case is a result of having set
>> CVS up when your setting was still "cygdrive" and the disconnect you get
>> now that it isn't.  So I believe you'd see the same problem no matter what
>> you changed "cygdrive" to.  Obviously, as you point out, symbolic links are
>> a good alternative in this case.
>
>Including 'ln -s / /cygdrive' after changing your mount point, so that /c
>and /cygdrive/c still refer to the same place.

Haven't we already looped several times in this discussion?  I don't
think there is any new information that needs to be imparted.  Can we
close this down now?

cgf

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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Andrew DeFaria]

Jim Reisert AD1C wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 10:16 AM, Andrew Schulman
> <schulman.andrew@epamail.epa.gov> wrote:
>> Personally I like /win/c etc., but sure, I guess you could put
>>
>> none / cygdrive binary,posix=0,user 0 0
>>
>> into /etc/fstab and get /c, /d, etc.
> There is a huge downside to this. I tried it. It totally broke all my 
> projects using CVS, because /cygdrive no longer existed, and all my 
> CVS projects used /cygdrive/f/CVSROOT as the Root
>
> So try/use at your own risk! I think symbolic links are the way to go.
$ mount -bsf F: /cvs

then s/cygdrive\/f/cvs/ in your CVS/Root files...

Done!

Or:

$ ln -s /win /cygdrive

Done!

IOW there are other ways.
-- 
Andrew DeFaria <http://defaria.com>
C:\> Bad command or file name! Go stand in the corner.


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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Andrew DeFaria]

Christopher Faylor wrote:
> Haven't we already looped several times in this discussion? I don't 
> think there is any new information that needs to be imparted. Can we 
> close this down now?
People obviously wish to discuss the issue. If you're not interested in 
their discussion then can't you simply skip this thread?
-- 
Andrew DeFaria <http://defaria.com>
One-seventh of your life is spent on Monday.


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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Shaddy Baddah]

Hi Andy,

Andy Koppe wrote:
> 2009/9/16 Dave Korn:
>   
>>> whatever) prefixes when accessing stuff from the other side of the
>>> fence.
>>>       
>>  Never mind the fence, what colour are we going to paint the bikeshed?
>>
>>  This is purely a matter of taste.
>>     
>
> Exactly. I didn't mean to suggest that Cygwin should go into C:\ by
> default. And yes, I'm quite capable of not installing MingW into the
> same place.
>
> My real gripe is with setup telling me off about putting Cygwin in the
> root dir ON EVERY SINGLE UPDATE.
>
>   
I apologise profusely for not letting this one just close as some have
expressed they wish the thread would (close). But I think I may have
one valuable contribution for you Andy.

Even with a customisation of setup.exe to not warn you everytime on
installing to c:/, I think a better solution for you is to remap root
(inspite of the ug giving a caveat for attempting this). From the 1.7
user guide
(http://cygwin.com/1.7/cygwin-ug-net/using.html#mount-table):

A correct root directory is quite essential to the operation of
Cygwin. A default root directory is evaluated at startup so a fstab
entry for the root directory is not necessary. If it's wrong, nothing
will work as expected. Therefore, the root directory evaluated by
Cygwin itself is treated as an immutable mount point and can't be
overridden in /etc/fstab... unless you think you really know what
you're doing. In this case, use the override flag in the options field
in the /etc/fstab file. Since this is a dangerous thing to do, do so
at your own risk.

Well, if you made an fstab like this (this is what I have tried on my
installation):

c:/      /    ntfs binary,override 0 0
c:/software/cygwin/bin /bin        ntfs binary 0 0
c:/software/cygwin/etc /etc        ntfs binary 0 0
c:/software/cygwin/lib /lib        ntfs binary 0 0
c:/software/cygwin/tmp /tmp        ntfs binary 0 0
c:/software/cygwin/usr /usr        ntfs binary 0 0
c:/software/cygwin/bin /usr/bin        ntfs binary 0 0
c:/software/cygwin/lib /usr/lib        ntfs binary 0 0
c:/software/cygwin/dev /dev        ntfs binary 0 0

you can achieve what you want (or I think you meant), whilst still
demarcating the cygwin installation from the rest of Windows. I know
it's a little convaluted, but IMO, it is still better than dropping
cygwin straight into c:/. The fact that setup.exe would stop bothering
you is a nice extra.

HTH and over and out (on this one),
Shaddy


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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Linda Walsh]

Harald Joerg wrote:
> Linda Walsh writes:
> 
>> [...] OTOH, at least the defaults are pretty sensible ...
> 
> Pretty sensible, indeed.  I love /cygdrive as just another example of a
> pretty sensible default.
---
	Well, MS, put their unix in /unix.  Wouldn't it make sense to put
a cygwin subsystem in /cygwin?  

	It's not like it's really "a program" (belonging in "/prog"...).

> 
>> ... (I can just hit ENTER), through the setup ...
> 
> ...and the default buttons in the GUI are always in the same place on
> the screen, so if I happen to use a mouse I can just click through, no
> need to move the mouse.  Not a big deal, maybe, but if so, why are so
> many other installers missing it?
----
	I *used* to "not get it" viz-a-vie the GUI, too.  You just have to
place your mouse over the cygwin window, then hit the enter key a bunch
of times till you get to the program selection window.  There, I admit,
it is sized awfully small to see anything -- so I usually have to resize
if I want anything other than the default selection...

> 
>> ... -- EXCEPT...at the end -- how many times do I have to tell setup
>> that I *STILL* don't want the icon on my desktop??!
> 
> I eventually got around that one.
> 
> I found that I do not want *any* icons on my desktop and switched them
> off completely.  There is an option in the "Sort symbols" function of
> the desktop.
---
	Well...there are times when I grab all of the icons on my desktop
in some frustrated moment, and drop them in a permanent link-to-folder,
'desktop-archive'...  so if I ever want to see what I tossed off the DT...

	But I put icons on the desktop for items I currently want to work
with -- sometimes it nice to have the ready access...

-l

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Re: cygdrive prefix

[Thomas Plank]

Linda Walsh (cygwin@tlinx.org) wrote:

> OTOH, at least the defaults are pretty sensible (I can just hit ENTER),
> through the setup -- EXCEPT...at the end -- how many times do I
> have to tell setup that I *STILL* don't want the icon on my desktop??!

I'm using cygwin on two different computers (home and work).
The one at home always wants to create the desktop symbol after calling
setup.exe, the other one never asks again for it since I deactivated the
checkbox ...

I have no idea why it is working and not.
The only difference is that cygwin is once in c:\cygwin and once in
d:\cygwin installed.

-- 
mfg Thomas

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Re: goldstar? Re: cygdrive prefix

[Andrew Schulman]

> Wow.  Nice summation of the reasons for the need for a c:\cygwin.
> 
> Can I get a goldstar here?

Awarded.  Sorry for the delay.

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