Mail Archives: cygwin/2002/07/28/21:09:38
On 29 Jul 2002 at 10:43, Robert Collins wrote:
> On Mon, 2002-07-29 at 10:31, Paul Derbyshire wrote:
> > On 28 Jul 2002 at 21:20, Robert Collins wrote:
>
> > > I won't say what you don't want to hear. You might consider searching
> > > the friendly archives, because they *tell* you what is worse - a home
> > > dir with spaces or a home dir w/o spaces.
> >
> > But once it's set, it's set.
>
> Untrue. Edit /etc/passwd.
And do what, exactly? I imagine that doing the wrong thing in that
file will break a lot of stuff, and that simply turning a space into
an underscore in each place where the name occurs (and in the
directory name) will turn out not to be everything that needs doing.
Also, should this be done from a Windows app with all Cygwin stuff
shut down? (I have a programmer's editor that will leave the passwd
file with unix newlines.) What will happen to things like crontabs?
Do these need to be moved, and if so how?
> > Obviously it should quote them only to other Cygwin linked programs.
> > Which it can identify by whether it launching something in the cygwin
> > tree or not.
>
> Untrue. cygcheck, wish and other programs in the cygwin tree may be
> native programs, and cygwin linked programs may reside outside the tree.
The vast majority of programs in the cygwin tree are, and the ones
that aren't probably form a finite number of exceptions that can be
explicitly handled as special cases. I don't imagine a lot of things
would need patching either. The compatibility layer could handle it.
For that matter, the compatibility layer could just check if the
target executable has cygwin.dll as a dependency. That should
identify them with perfect accuracy.
> Imagine away... Cygwin's path includes the windows directory - and that
> means many programs that won't unquote arguments.
It does? Why on earth...
> How to Disable Automatic Short File Name Generation:
> <http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];Q210638>
Nobody would create a file with a long name and no short name. It
would break every app in existence just about, and probably the
filesystem itself.
> I'm bowing out of this thread. You've shown yourself incapable of
> discriminating between your imagination and reality.
No, I've shown myself incapable of knowing what I haven't read
anywhere and nobody's told me yet. I.e. incapable of reading minds.
If that's something you expect me to be able to do, your expectations
are faulty.
> It makes it very hard to discuss the topic at hand.
I suppose it does, at that. You can't just mutter in my direction and
wait for me to read your mind -- instead you have to actually
articulate what you want me to know, and you have to give me all of
it, not just bits and pieces and expect me to pick the rest out of
your brain-waves on the aether. That must be an awful lot of work. I
guess it's difficult for telepaths like yourself to get used to
communicating with us esper-challenged. I sympathize. But I still
need the additional clarifications I asked for -- exact instructions
for modifying the directory name and the passwd file in tandem, and
anything else that needs dealing with, from crontabs to /etc/profile
to whatever. I don't want to have three changes in three places
suggested, make them, and then have things get worse because of the
four or five other changes nobody got it into their head to suggest
but thought I'd just *know* had to be made as well. Assume I don't
know anything but what you tell me and what's in the FAQ, and that I
remember the latter only hazily because it's a while since I read it.
> * You should try Chris's list of tests.
I might, if I knew who Chris was and the URL for this list.
> * You could ask the list (via the archives or direct) the simplest way
> to get rid of the space in your cygwin home directory.
I think I did that, and yours was the first response that was even
halfway helpful -- the bit about modifying /etc/passwd at least adds
slightly to my knowledge of what to do, although that knowledge is
far from complete as yet.
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