Subject: Re: [BUG?] run.exe and pdflatex
From: Jeff <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 21:49:59 -0800
Newsgroups: lists.cygwin
List-Id: <cygwin.cygwin.com>

On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 21:47:08 +0100,
Sven Köhler <skoehler[at]upb[dot]de> wrote:

>But is there another easy way to execute cygwin programs from outside
>cygwin? I think of symlinks, shell-scripts, perl-scripts, etc...

The "easiest" or "best" depends partly upon what you use to provide
your console window. Do you run bash in a native Windows console? Do
you 'export CYGWIN=tty' to make this console window more POSIX-like?
Or, perhaps, maybe you use a terminal program. Cygwin RXVT can run in
"native mode" using the built-in W11 code, or it can be used with an X
server. If you have X11 installed, you can use xterm, and perhaps other
things. I read somewhere that some people use putty...

It also depends on which Windows subsystem you are using to launch your
Cygwin app. Are you adding registry entries to create Explorer context
menu commands and/or file type associations? Are you calling your
Cygwin app from a "DOS" batch file (and do you need the control to be
returned to your batch file once your Cygwin app completes)? Are you
calling it from a native Windows console mode app that accepts or
expects user-defined external apps for some functions? Or, perhaps, you
just want to create a desktop shortcut to your Cygwin app.

There has been a fair amount of discussion of this topic in the last
two months. I described my own solutions in
<http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2007-12/msg00506.html>. And yes, some of
this discussion has been about shell quoting.

>I'm not a unix-programmer unfortunatly. I'm not very familiar with the APIs.

Free documentation is available. The Single Unix Specification ver.2
(susv2) is downloadable at
<http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007908775/download/>. susv3 is
available at <http://www.unix.org/single_unix_specification/>; you must
register first, then you can navigate your way to the downloads page.

I also managed to find some Redhat linux manual pages (probably in an
RPM); section 2 of the manual also documents the APIs. I don't recall
where on RedHat's site I found them, I would have to dig for them
again.

These two resources, plus the Cygwin user's guide, should give you
everything you need.

Jeff

-- 
"Sorry, my life is still in beta, and nowhere near stable enough for a
release."

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