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Message-Id: <4.3.1.2.20030126161954.024d7fe0@pop.rcn.com>
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Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2003 16:44:31 -0500
To: "Rolf Campbell" <rcampbell AT tropicnetworks DOT com>,
   "cygwin" <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
From: "Larry Hall (RFK Partners, Inc)" <lhall AT rfk DOT com>
Subject: RE: Cygwin 1.3.19 Windows 2000 Professional SP3 bash $home 
  /usr/bin/%USERPROFILE%
In-Reply-To: <83040F98B407E6428FEC18AC720F5D73E501B3@exchange.tropicnetw
 orks.com>
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At 04:20 PM 1/26/2003, Rolf Campbell wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Larry Hall (RFK Partners, Inc) [mailto:lhall AT rfk DOT com] 
> > Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2003 4:03 PM
> > To: Elfyn McBratney; cygwin; David Christensen
> > Subject: Re: Cygwin 1.3.19 Windows 2000 Professional SP3 bash 
> > $home /usr/bin/%USERPROFILE%
> > 
>...
> > 
> > environments between two products.  While solutions for 
> > somehow automating the detection of this clash and resolving 
> > it in the 
> > Cygwin installer (setup) is, no doubt, possible, it's pretty 
> > far-fetched to claim this is a Cygwin issue.
>
>I agree that this isn't a cygwin problem, but it might be nice if setup
>announced that HOME is being set to something that will screw up cygwin.



I'm sure the (cygwin-apps) list would consider any contributed functionality
to address this concern.  I would, however, argue that the functionality you
suggest would not detect the fact that HOME was set by 'Dia Win32 Installer' 
until the next time setup is run.  In my opinion, this makes the patch 
less than optimal since it still generates inquiries to the list for help.  
Unless it cuts down on list traffic, the added heuristics to try to figure 
out if this (or any other) environment setting will interfere with the proper running of Cygwin is allot of complexity for little or no gain.  Also,
there's an implication in all this that setting HOME breaks bash or Cygwin.
It doesn't.  It merely tells bash to not use the home directory stated in 
/etc/passwd as the user's home.  If you recheck David's original post, you'll
see this is true.  The three things David mentions, his prompt being too long
for his liking, his home directory being wrong, and HOME being set to the 
wrong directory, are all the result of HOME being set but none of them are
bugs or even real problems (even the prompt issue is apparently just the 
result of bash showing the path in the prompt by default, which is 
configurable).  So, at the moment, I'm unconvinced that there is a problem
here that needs fixing in Cygwin.  If there is though and it requires 
detecting when HOME set to something "inappropriate", I think someone will
need to define what is and isn't appropriate before any patch could be 
considered.  But I'd suggest anyone that wants to pursue this issue further
start by defining an actual problem resulting from setting HOME (or any other 
environment variable?)  That would form the best basis for any discussion 
about how to address the problem.

Just my $.02.



Larry Hall                              lhall AT rfk DOT com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      http://www.rfk.com
838 Washington Street                   (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
Holliston, MA 01746                     (508) 893-9889 - FAX


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