Subject: Re: Feedback needed on proposed cygwin feature
From: [email-masked] (Theodore Jump)

2 Dec 1997 00:54:51 -0800
Message-ID: <34861520.493395265.cygnus.gnu-win32@smtp>
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(First off, my apologies to Chris as he's going to get this text twice
as I forgot to send it to the list only.)

Reflexively (meaning that I haven't coded or ported anything or done
extensive enough work inside the cygwin environment to have a real
strong opinion) I would say that I vote for your contribution be added
in to the "next" official release and I vote for the options to be
done in this way:

1. "cygwin-wide" Defaults are stored in the registry, and should be
   stored in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE or HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG hives to
   facilitate sharing among all "users" of the machine.

2. "program-specific" Defaults are stored in the registry underneath
   same hive as #1 above.  This would be analagous to the "App Paths"
   registry keys that are found in:

	HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/App Paths/

   Which specify modified paths to use for specific applications,
   if they need something other than the default system-wide path.

3. The environment variable CYGWIN32 operate as Chris documented, and
   if present overrides the defaults are stated in 1 and 2 above.

4. The 'cygwin' command operated as Chris documented, any options set
   there overriding anything set by the previous three options.

In all cases it could result in the existance of the CYGWIN32 env-var
as Chris documented so that applications that are cygwin-ized could
check that for safety and for runtime options.

It may be desireable to allow an option at the registry level to
disable usage of the 2nd two methods - for paranoia or security
reasons (e.g.: to prevent something launched from inetd or some other
daemon from altering a setting for a specific program as mandated by
the registry).

I do recognize that this is not the simplest of approches, however it
does facilitate both site-mandated configurations (particularly if
there is a registry-stored option for disabling 3 & 4) and user- or
program-specified additions/overrides.

By maintaining the support for the CYGWIN32 var it makes it trivial to
set/use that via scripts and batch files without modifying the system
registry (a not-quite-fast option) and without potentially huge
command lines.

Just my 2c.

-Ted
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