Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2005 12:15:48 -0500 From: Christopher Faylor To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Subject: Re: Multiple installations and 3PPs Message-ID: <20050114171548.GB6227@trixie.casa.cgf.cx> Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com References: <1105721403 DOT 28030 DOT 53 DOT camel AT localhost> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <1105721403.28030.53.camel@localhost> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i On Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 04:50:03PM +0000, Adrian Cox wrote: >Multiple installations of Cygwin clash, both over the registry name >used for the mount table and the name of the shared memory region. >This makes it difficult to have several versions for testing purposes, >and causes problems with software from 3PPs. I don't know what "3PPs" (third party providers?) might be but there is only supposed to be one version of cygwin1.dll in use on your computer at a time. The DLL even issues a rather verbose error when it detects two versions running. >Has anybody considered using PSAPI to find the full path to >cygwin1.dll, and using a hash of this path as the name of the shared >memory region and of the registry key? This is rather like asking "Has anyone found a way to put sound deadening foam over the little thing that chimes when you're not wearing your seatbelt?" The warnings are there for a reason, not because we couldn't figure out how to name the shared memory region to avoid clashes. The problem isn't as simple as trying to avoid shared memory clashes. The cygwin developers know how to keep multiple versions of cygwin around for testing purposes so there really is no reason to add code just to accommodate people who are apparently using cygwin for commercial purposes without bothering to think too much about how they are installing it. Usually when people suggest that we should modify cygwin to accommodate their needs they haven't investigated the options that are available to them. It is really not that difficult to switch between two different versions by setting the path and using the "mount/unmount" commands. That should be adequate for testing purposes. If someone is providing a product which installs cygwin then they should be as polite as possible and not impact an existing installation. This requires them to understand how things work, however, and some providers do not want to bother with that, leaving their hapless end-users to figure things out. That's not very good customer support for the the third party product providers, but it is rather common. That said, however, If someone has an idea for a tool for the distribution that would make things easier for the people who just want to shut their eyes and release the dll, then it will certainly be considered. It should be almost as simple as just running cygcheck to see if cygcheck detects existing registry keys and then checking to see that the cygwin DLL exists in the standard place. >(I couldn't find anything with Google, but cygwin-developers isn't >indexed). That's because cygwin-developers is a private mailing list. cgf -- 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/