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Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 22:06:51 -0400
Message-ID: <f60fe000909161906paf3ea99s407552cd8105bc4d@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: goldstar? Re: cygdrive prefix
From: "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed AT gmail DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
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On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 9:44 PM, Christopher Faylor wrote:
[re: Shaddy Baddah]
> Wow. =C2=A0Nice summation of the reasons for the need for a c:\cygwin.
>
> Can I get a goldstar here?

Indeed, a nice summary.

Let me dispel some misconceptions that piped up in the Apple
comparison: the two ways of thinking may live side by side in OS X,
and they coexist peacefully (some would say beautifully), but they
aren't really integrated in the sense being described here.

Mac-ish apps live in /Applications; UNIX-ish apps live in /bin (or
/usr/local/bin, or /opt/local/bin if you use MacPorts, or /sw/bin if
you use Fink, or...).

 Mac apps come as disk images (.dmg)'s usually containing packages
(.mpkg); UNIX apps are either manually installed, or managed via port
or fink (the latter of which uses apt behind the scenes).   There's no
grand unified packaging system.  In fact, if someone wants access to
all the goodies that are easily installable via MacPorts and Fink,
then there's a good chance they have two or three installations of
some shared libraries: one for the main OS and one for each of the
packaging systems.

If there's a Mac app to launch a UNIX program (e.g. Gimp.app), chances
are the UNIX binary it uses is completely separate copy that lives in
the app's folder in /Applications, even if there's a perfectly good
copy in a system bin directory.

If you navigate using the Finder (OS X equivalent of Windows
Explorer), the system directories like /bin and /etc don't even show
up.

Really, the two modes of operation don't talk to each other much. They
just share a filesystem.  It works because they mostly leave each
other alone.  There's no tradition in Mac land of creating a top-level
"bin" folder and putting things in there, because there was no command
line at all on the traditional Mac OS, so there was no point.  Which
means the sort of conflicts mentioned by Shaddy rarely arise.

--=20
Mark J. Reed <markjreed AT gmail DOT com>

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