Subject: Re: Making a free Windows NT POSIX subsystem?
From: Brian Dessent <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 16:22:45 -0700

Mike Swanson wrote:
> 
> I've read from archived messages that the microsoft POSIX subsystem in
> Windows NT is not good enough for Cygwin.

MS's posix subsystem is not very useful, it's only there to meet the
minimum requirements so that MS can bid on government contracts that
require Posix compliance.

> I was curious as to weather it's possible to develop a free POSIX
> subsystem for Windows NT and use that instead.  I don't know any of
> the technical programming details and difficulties with it...
> 
> How possible is this? Would this allow case-sensitivity with NTFS, and
> certain other features blocked by the Win32 subsystem?
> 
> More importantly, how easy would it to maintain an NT POSIX subsystem
> port of Cygwin (assuming that a free one would be made with more
> functionality than Microsoft's) and the Win32-based Cygwin (very
> important for Windows 9x/Me)?

I don't know what you think Cygwin is but its whole point in life is to
provide a posix environment under windows, and it does that quite well. 
I don't see what calling it an official "subsystem" really buys you
compared to just leaving it as a .dll against which to link and various
support binaries.  Actually, as you said it would mean dropping 9x
compatibility which is not something the project wants to do.  You can
already get strict case checking with "check-case:strict".  Cygwin calls
the NT layer API for most of the file functions so the thing about
"win32 getting in the way" doesn't make any sense.  In short you sound
like you're asking for something for the hell of it with no perceived
benefits.

Brian

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