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Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 12:05:20 -0500
From: Christopher Faylor <cgf AT redhat DOT com>
To: cygwin-apps AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Making RXVT The Standard Terminal
Message-ID: <20010330120520.B13168@redhat.com>
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In-Reply-To: <00ca01c0b923$e2b3ec10$1500040a@na.cisco.com>; from dankamin@cisco.com on Fri, Mar 30, 2001 at 06:15:31AM -0800

On Fri, Mar 30, 2001 at 06:15:31AM -0800, Dan Kaminsky wrote:
>> > /cygdrive is not "effectively undocumented"...
>   
>In terms of:
>   
>1) Crypto/Security
>2) Legality
>3) UI Design
>4) Actual user (lack of) awareness
>
>It's not a listed resource when you ask for all available resources to be
>shown, therefore it's effectively undocumented.
>
>> > Although, I guess it could be undocumented if you never actually read
>> > the documentation.
>
>ls /
>
>doesn't show /cygdrive.  Neither does mount.  Therefore, it's
>undocumented, by virtue of expectation.  The semantic purpose of listing
>a directory and a mount table is to request from the operating system a
>documentation of what resources are available.

The term "undocumented" has a very precise meaning.  It doesn't mean
"I looked at my screen and couldn't figure out what to do".

If you want to make a point that it is not immediately obvious, I won't
argue.  However, much of cygwin's operation is not obvious from the
start.

What is a mount table anyway?  Why can't I use backslashes in bash?  My file
has CRLF line endings.  Why?

FWIW, I'd be happy to make the cygdrive directory show up when you do a
'ls /'.  Someday.  Cygwin is a work in progress and this is very low on my
personal list of things to do.

>Clearly *something* needs to be done to make it more obvious how to access
>system drives.  I personally prefer /c, /d, etc. simply because it's a quick
>mental translation from c:\ to /c.  At minimum, a /cygdrive folder should
>exist by default, perhaps just renamed to /drives.
>
>Ideally, the setup program itself would give the user the choice.  This is a
>*core need* for Cygwin to address; it's explicitly non-obvious how to access
>resources outside the Cygwin psuedosandbox.

I'll be interested to see your changes to setup.exe.  Please send a patch and
a ChangeLog entry here.  Check out the "Contributing" link at the Cygwin web
site for details.

We don't need an assignment form for setup sources, so there is no need
to fill one out unless you plan on contributing a patch to implement
your idea about having /cygdrive show up when you type 'ls /', too.

cgf