Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
List-Subscribe: <mailto:cygwin-subscribe AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Archive: <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/>
List-Post: <mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Help: <mailto:cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com>, <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/#faqs>
Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Message-ID: <937756AF9E0BDC4396C09F32D8B41F2B2FE283@pauex2ku01.agere.com>
From: "Williams, Gerald S (Jerry)" <gsw AT agere DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: RE: case sensitivity and filenames
Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 12:41:10 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-8859-1"

As Randall pointed out, this has been discussed before.
We even went into some depth about precisely how to get
proper case-sensitive behavior. Actually, it goes even
deeper than case-sensitivity: ever try to create a file
named "prn.c" or "aux.txt"?

I've taken it a step further and created a project on
SourceForge devoted to creating a public-domain library
to provide such a service. At present, I'm working on
getting permission from my company to contribute my own
work to the project (without which the project probably
is a non-starter at least from my perspective).

Only NT-based systems (which includes 2000 and XP) can
benefit, but it is my hope that once this library (which
I named CaseWise) is proven in, I can eventually add an
option to Cygwin to use it. This library doesn't rely on
a POSIX subsystem, but goes straight to NT's Native API.
It's not trivial, but not as bad as it sounds. CaseWise
provides direct replacements for the affected Win32 calls
and synchronizes with the Win32 subsystem (for example,
CaseWiseSetCurrentDirectory() works as expected).

As Larry pointed out, there will always be issues if
you try to use native Windows applications to access
files that they couldn't create. CaseWise will include
tools to help, but it is highly unlikely that Cygwin
would ever choose this as its default behavior.

-Jerry Williams

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/