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Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:11:36 -0700
From: Brian Dessent <brian AT dessent DOT net>
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Subject: Re: Cygwin filesystem
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Francis Rossi wrote:

> it can take hours, for the same reason. I think it could be resloved 
> by creating a separate partition for /usr and placing it into a 
> separate file with virtual filesystem like on VMWare or Bochs. When
> Cygwin is started this partition would be mounted like Windows disks
> and deleting it would last as long as one click.

This is very easy to work around.  Just put your Cygwin installation
somewhere else, such as a separate partition (as has already been
mentioned downthread.)  Besides, if you really want it as a monolithic
file, you can do that yourself today.  Just install colinix (or vmware,
or ...) and then mount the filesystem over SMB and install Cygwin
there.  Or you could even do it without colinux running by creating an
ext2fs in a file and then mounting that image file as a drive letter
using one of the existing r/w Windows ext2 filesystem drivers.

The key point is that Cygwin is just a layer on top of Windows -- there
is no such thing as a Cygwin filesystem (unless you count managed mode
mounts), as anything that Windows can see Cygwin can see.  So just use
existing methods to locate or isolate the filesystem, if that's what you
want to do.

And I must echo that removing the \Cygwin folder takes a couple of
minutes at most for me.  I think Win98 and/or FAT32 is to blame if that
takes hours.  On an NT system with NTFS it should be very quick.

Brian

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