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Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 12:42:28 -0400
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Mount table in registry
Message-ID: <20030605164228.GF7542@ny-kenton2a-710.buf.adelphia.net>
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References: <20030522142614 DOT GN19367 AT cygbert DOT vinschen DOT de> <Pine DOT GSO DOT 4 DOT 44 DOT 0305221107210 DOT 7611-100000 AT slinky DOT cs DOT nyu DOT edu> <e0u1b4k2qk DOT fsf AT wallaby DOT ps DOT uni-sb DOT de>
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From: somian AT adelphia DOT net (Soren Andersen)

On Thu, Jun 05, 2003 at 04:39:31PM +0200, Sebastian Miele wrote:
> > Would making a libmount.a (or, better yet, cygmount.dll) be a good
> > idea?  Then programs can link against it and be guaranteed that they
> > can read mounts or verify mount locations.  I know Cygwin exports
> > getmntent() and the like, but the above would be something that
> > doesn't depend on cygwin1.dll.  Setup.exe could then use it as well
> > (although then it'd have to be a static lib).  Comments, flames?

> If the resulting cygmount.dll will be distributed under the LGPL or
> the X11 license in future versions of cygwin (so that any system with
> cygwin1.dll installed also has cygmount.dll installed), I would do
> that and add cygwin->windows path conversion functions which also
> resolve symlinks.

> Sebastian

I for one am in favor of this proposal. I am not a cygwin guru or a
heavy-weight programmer in general, i.e. I haven't hacked on Cygwin
itself except indirectly (Filesys::CygwinPaths module, for instance),
but I've had enough exposure to cygwin that I feel justified in forming
an opinion on this matter. Exposing the cygwin mount stuff via a library
that can be linked against, where programmers can know where the code is
going to be, seems like a helpful and reasonable thing.

I am sure there are other considerations -- there always are (sigh) --
but this sounds like something worth pursuing.

One thing that would preserved and enhanced by such a "service" being
available, would be the values of independence and creativity that are a
part of what I value so much about my experience of using cygwin. I like
that cygwin lets me (empowers me) to fool around with bash scripts and
so on, that allow me to look at computing problems in new ways and come
up with my own ways of solving them. If I don't like the way that
something works by default, I can often find a way to make it work
instead, the way I want it to. This is harder to do with M$Windows
itself because so much is fixed and arbitrarily limited by the design
"philosophy" (term used in the loosest possible manner) prevelent over
M$Windows.

I once even hacked on `cygpath' and cooked up an altered version that
has defaults that make sense to me, different from what is hardcoded
into the standard cygwin release of that tool. Never distributed that,
of course. Anyway that's an example of what I mean, where my values and
enjoyment are at wrt cygwin.

-- 
See my OpenPGP key at https://savannah.gnu.org/people/viewgpg.php?user_id=6050
GnuPG public key fingerprint  | "Only when efforts to reform society have as
 BD26 A5D8 D781 C96B 9936     |  their point of departure the reformation of
 310F 0573 A3D9 4E24 4EA6     |  the inner life -- human revolution -- will
they lead us with certainty to a world of lasting peace and true human security."
                                -- Daisaku Ikeda

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