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Message-ID: <ADF57C3C368ED411803C00508BCDF1A5093920@pc-56.cddk.dk>
From: Peter Ring <PRI AT cddk DOT dk>
To: "'cygwin AT cygwin DOT com'" <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: RE: why not use root as root?
Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2001 11:39:46 +0100 
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Although cygwin users are, in general, early adapters with a bit of battle
experience, I understand your concern; some cygwin users want things to work
out-of-the-box (or net, as it is), so why not just adapt to their simple
ways, and give them a *nix-like environment in a small black box on their
Windows(R) desktop, avoiding interaction with the cruel environment outside?

Well, for some of us at least, the whole idea of having this *nix-like
environment running on top of Windows is exactly that we need things to
interact - why else the bother? Since we know that we have to (indeed want
to) take care of a multitude of interfaces and interactions, this RMPW
(root-mount-point-warning) is perplexing. It hints that we might have
overlooked something significant, and provokes us to pester the list with
the subject 'why not use root as root?'.

Unless you intend to use cygwin only from within a very restricted
environment, e.g. a very simple PATH, you'll have to take care of
name-clashes between executables anyway. 'sort' and 'find' comes to mind.

But I'm sorry to say that I find it hard to improve on the wording in the
FAQ. It actually just says "unless you know what you are doing and are
prepared to deal with the consequences".

Of course I went ahead and mounted '/' off the root of a Windows volume; so
far no disasters. I maintain a directory tree rather similar to the
Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, installing native ports of TeX, ghostscript,
emacs, etc. into this directory tree, and I find it easier to understand and
maintain if '/usr/local' is 'E:\usr\local' and so on.

Happy new year and thanks for a great project!

Kind regards,
Peter Ring



-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Faylor [mailto:cgf AT redhat DOT com]
Sent: 2. januar 2001 03:31
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: why not use root as root?


<snip>

The section of the FAQ that is under fire shows the preference of the
people who are distributing cygwin and gives a rationale for doing
things a certain way.  It is not intended to be an exhaustive treatise
which magically adapts itself to everyone who reads it.

<snip>

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