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Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:19:57 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed AT gmail DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Bash doesn't launch the applications directly.
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On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 8:59 PM, Lenik wrote:
> Is it possible to make cygstart as a bash built-in?

I think you might misunderstand the relationship between Cygwin and
bash.  Bash is not a part of Cygwin.  It is a standalone shell,
written to run on any UNIX-like platform: Linux, Solaris, OS X, BSD,
etc.  Apart from some minor compile-time conditional code that's
Cygwin specific, parallel to similar platform-specific code for other
environments, bash is not modified at all for the Cygwin environment.
The whole point of Cygwin is to allow programs written for UNIX to
compile and run under Windows - and bash is just one such program.

Since bash was written for UNIX, it uses the UNIX mechanism for
launching another process.  Cygwin does the best it can to make that
mechanism work on Windows, but it's not very efficient because that's
not the way Windows is designed.  Still, adding Cygwin-specific code
to bash is not the answer, if only because the upstream bash team is
unlikely to provide any help supporting such a patch.  Maintaining
something like that in the face of upstream changes is a significant
challenge that the (tiny!) Cygwin team doesn't have the resources for.

As Eric said, the only major changes in the direction of improved
performance that one might be able to convince the bash folks to make
is to add support for the new POSIX spawn interface, but bash has its
own roadmap with its own goal, and if posix_spawn() is even on the
list it's a ways in the future.  In any case, adding it won't do any
good until the Cygwin team also adds that interface to Cygwin, but
there's little incentive to add it to Cygwin until it's supported by
bash... sort of a chicken and egg problem on the motivation front.

If I may ask, what are you doing that is causing this to be a
significant performance problem for you?

-- Mark

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