Subject: Re: Determining the location of a cygwin installation
From: John Dallaway <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 20:22:34 +0000

On Wednesday 26 Mar 2003 18:56, Christopher Faylor wrote:

> >> I need to determine the location of an existing Cygwin net
> >> installation programatically.
>
> On Wed, Mar 26, 2003 at 06:45:42PM -0000, John Morrison wrote:

> >cygpath -w -p /
> 
> That's the only sure-fire way to work since there is no guarantee that
> the registry items will be around forever.  In fact, I guarantee that
> they won't be.
>
> If you are talking about writing an actual cygwin-linked c program rather
> than a script then you'd use the cygwin_conv_to_full_win32_path call

Both these approaches assume that the script or executable knows where /bin 
is already, either to add to the PATH so that cygwin1.dll is found or to 
invoke the cygpath tool.

It would be useful for the net installer to create a registry item which 
specified the location of the most recent Cygwin installation. This would 
allow those GUI applications which are _not_ typically invoked from a 
Cygwin shell prompt to locate Cygwin tools. It would also allow Cygwin 
application installers to create desktop shortcuts which specify the Cygwin 
/bin directory as the application working directory such that cygwin1.dll 
can be located when the application is invoked. Is there any reason why the 
generation of such an a 'Cygwin installation path' registry entry should 
not be added to the Cygwin net installer?

John Dallaway

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