From:	corinna DOT vinschen AT cityweb DOT de (Corinna Vinschen)
Subject:	Re: New winsup snapshot 9/14/98
16 Sep 1998 16:32:43 -0700 :
Message-ID:	<36003FCB.42CD371A.cygnus.cygwin32.developers@cityweb.de>
References:	<19980914141243 DOT 37248 AT cygnus DOT com>
Mime-Version:	1.0
To:	Christopher Faylor <cgf AT cygnus DOT com>, cygwin32-developers AT cygnus DOT com

Christopher Faylor wrote:
> The registry is always an option but most people are afraid of it.
> That's why I was thinking of using the standard UNIX way of producing
> "special" files in /dev.  I *think* that most gnu-win32 users who
> are familiar with UNIX would be familiar with that concept.
> 
> With the registry, possibly we'd could support /dev as a "directory that
> lives in the registry".  Hmm, that might be a nice generalization for
> other stuff, too.
> 

A real /dev directory would be fine, too.
How would you realize the mapping to the windows device?
One possibility would be an implementation like the symlinks:
The file has system attribute set and contains e.g.:

	!<device>major,minor

or

	!<dev>\\.\d:

It's also a good solution, I think. In such a case I would
nevertheless prefer the method with major/minor numbers.
The implementation in the cygwin kernel would be much
easier. Moreover, the big deal is: No other run time decision
about path to device mapping is necessary and nevermore the
cygwin kernel depends on fixed device names :-)

Corinna

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