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From:	"Dave Korn" <dave DOT korn AT artimi DOT com>
To:	<cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject:	RE: PATHs in Windows and Cygwin
Date:	Tue, 13 Jun 2006 10:39:05 +0100
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On 13 June 2006 08:18, fergus wrote:

> However, if I start Cygwin from a command prompt having first set the
> Windows PATH to (null) as follows
> 
>     c:> set PATH=
>     c:> j:\bin\bash
> 
> then not everything works: I get messages of the style "This application has
> failed to start because cygwin1.dll was not found".
> 
> 1. I realise that Cygwin is not standalone (it needs a Windows platform to
> run) but I had not realised that the conduit to required Windows files would
> be through PATH (if setting PATH to (null) is indeed the reason for the
> error msgs and loss of functionality).
> 
> But 2. If this _is_ the reason, why does the error msg refer to a missing
> cygwin1.dll, which is clearly there on the Cygwin PATH?
> 
> Can anybody illuminate this for me, please? Thank you.

  It isn't possible to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, basically!
How could the cygwin dll be findable on the cygwin PATH unless it was already
loaded in order to convert the cygwin POSIX path into win32 paths?

  It's windows that is responsible for loading the cygwin dll, not cygwin.
Hence it's the windows path that has to have cygwin's bin dir on it for
cygwin1.dll to even be found before anything cygwin-ish (such as the cygwin
PATH variable) even exists.  


    cheers,
      DaveK
-- 
Can't think of a witty .sigline today....


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