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Subject: Re: colons with rsync
From: Ben Smith <bendees AT cox DOT net>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.44.0306111408360.25752-100000@slinky.cs.nyu.edu>
References: <Pine DOT GSO DOT 4 DOT 44 DOT 0306111408360 DOT 25752-100000 AT slinky DOT cs DOT nyu DOT edu>
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Date: 11 Jun 2003 15:36:03 -0500
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Thanks for the link.  I can see now that this is a hot topic.

http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2002-09/msg00858.html

It seems to me that, with respect to the colon issue at least, it is
being actively ignored in order to maintain the "File Streams"
functionality of NTFS in Cygwin.  The question is "Why?"  By all
accounts, "Alternate File Streams" is little known, little used,
possibly problematic due to unreported filespace usage, and unexpected
within Cygwin.  All this seems to achieve is to break lots of normal
Unix applications under Cygwin.

In this reply, you said:

http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2003-06/msg00317.html

"In all other details (including restricted characters in filenames),
Cygwin uses the underlying filesystem's conventions.  If we go out of
our way to be compatible with Linux in this aspect, why not also support
"aux" as the filename, or support '\' in filenames?  The argument for
not doing the latter was that we don't want to disassociate ourselves
from the underlying filesystem, IIRC, so why go back on it now?"

I would ask (because I really want to know):

What's the difference?  

Scenario 1:  Cygwin follows all Windows filesystem conventions and
ignores Unix features that are not present on Windows.  Cygwin is
Windows on Unix on Windows, which is completely useless since NO Unix
apps use functionality that is specific to Windows and most Unix apps
require functionality that is not supported in Windows.  Applications
have to be rewritten to work around limitations of Cygwin/Windows.

Scenario 2:  Cygwin tries to follow all Unix filesystem conventions and
map them to Windows.  Nothing is lost since the files that were
accessible under Windows through Scenario 1 are still accessible. 
Functionality is gained since Cygwin can work around a lot of Windows
limitations and act as an emulation layer for Unix apps.

Also, since no one seems to be interested in making this change to
Cygwin itself, is there really a technical reason that rsync can't be
adjusted to work around it?  I don't think the current behavior achieves
anything other than strife.

-Ben


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