Re: /cygdrive/windows ?

[Chris Faylor <cgf at cygnus dot com>]

On Wed, May 03, 2000 at 05:31:32AM -0700, Earnie Boyd wrote:
>--- Espen Harlinn <espen.harlinn@seamos.no> wrote:
>> > On Tue, May 02, 2000 at 10:50:06PM -0400, DJ Delorie wrote:
>> > >
>> > >`cygpath --windir`
>> > >
>> > >The only time we'd need something like this visible outside a compiled
>> > >application is a script, and a script can use cygpath to get the
>> > >directory path and store it.  Any compiled program can just call
>> > >GetWindowsDirectory() itself.
>> >
>> > Actually, I was thinking that it would be nice to have this in a tar file:
>> >
>> > /cygdrive/system/some.dll .
>> >
>> > This would always extract some.dll to the windows/system directory.
>> 
>> IMHO: Putting things in windows\system[32] is not a very bright idea,
>> keeping the complete cygwin installation in a separate directory is how I
>> like it. At various times it has been usefull to have several different
>> cygwin installations installed into different directories. If some.dll goes
>> into windows\system[32] the requirement for backwards binary compability
>> becomes more stringent when changes are made to some.dll. There is also the
>> slight problem that some.dll may allready exist on the target system and it
>> might just be something quite different from your some.dll i.e. a name
>> clash.
>> 
>> Espen
>
>IMNSHO, I agree with Espen.  Not a good idea at all.

I am talking about providing people with a convenient way of finding two
important windows directories via the filesystem.

I never said anything about modifying the installation to put the cygwin
DLL there.  There are, however, other packages which require putting
files in the windows or windows/system directories.

Of course, I am aware that you could write a program to print the paths.
I know that there are environment variables.  Using something like
cygpath to translate the paths would mean that, if the path was used on
a mount line the windows path WOULD go into the registry.  I know that
it is unlikely that this would change but it is not impossible.

I wanted to have some convenient way of putting a file in an archive and
having it extract to the windows directories.  This is NOT for the current
setup.  I certainly know that this is a good idea and have mentioned this
on cygwin and cygwin-developers.

cgf