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X-Authentication-Warning: localhost.localdomain: ronald owned process doing -bs
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 14:26:54 +0100 (CET)
From: Ronald Landheer-Cieslak <ronald AT landheer DOT com>
X-X-Sender: ronald AT localhost DOT localdomain
To: Ben Clewett <B DOT Clewett AT roadrunner DOT uk DOT com>
cc: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Duplicate CygWin
In-Reply-To: <3E521E8D.7030302@roadrunner.uk.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0302181417460.17626-100000@localhost.localdomain>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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On Tue, 18 Feb 2003, Ben Clewett wrote:
> (Sorry about incorrect subject on first posting)
> 
> Noting:-  It's not a cut down version of CygWin*.DLL I need, but a cut 
> down version of the file system, to just a couple of dozen files in 
> /bin, /tmp, /usr and /etc, forming a 'mini' UNIX for a specific application.
> 
> Just been scanning the postings quickly.  My knowlage of the internals 
> of CygWin are vauge, but are you saying it's impossible to have two 
> sideways compatable versions of CygWin installed, as any detected 
> version miss-match (likelly) will drop the code?
It is impossible to have two *different* Cygwin1 DLLs on the same system, 
running at the same time. This is because Cygwin has a space in memory of 
its own, which is shared among Cygwin processes. If you have two Cygwin 
DLLs running at the same time, they will fight eachother for that space. 
That is why you need to "rename"[1] that space if you want two *different* 
Cygwin DLLs running on your system at the same time: one of the two must 
be different from the standard Cygwin. This is what the people behind 
Xygwin failed to do.

> And there is no way of controling CygWin so that it uses only a specific 
> .dll?  (ie, using the PATH variable or something...)
That is possible, and is even likely to work if you make sure that:
1. you don't try to use both DLLs at the same time
2. none of the utils you have for one DLL will find the other DLL

> My other need, to have a separate /root directory for each runnin 
> Cygwin, I can't see anything on that.
> 
> If this is not possible, would it be too hard to put some hack into the 
> .dll to, say, read an environment variable for it's root, before the 
> usual registry search?
Are you talking about the '/' directory or the '/root' directory? The '/' 
directory is found in the mount table, which (for the time being) is in 
the registry, the '/root' directory doesn't exist under Cygwin, AFAICT.

The amount of hacking you will need for the two to co-exist is rather
mininal: the thread ends with a patch by cgf (the pricipal Cygwin
maintainer and project manager) which shows you how to do the
registry-part. It does not show you what hacking is required to "rename"
the memory region[1] for Cygwin. You'll have to figure that one out on
your own.

rlc

[1]: slightly dumbed down to not get into technical details too much, hope 
no-one minds :)



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