From: corinna DOT vinschen AT cityweb DOT de (Corinna Vinschen) Subject: Re: New winsup snapshot 9/14/98 16 Sep 1998 16:32:43 -0700 Message-ID: <36003FCB.42CD371A.cygnus.cygwin32.developers@cityweb.de> References: <19980914141243 DOT 37248 AT cygnus DOT com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: Christopher Faylor , cygwin32-developers AT cygnus DOT com Christopher Faylor wrote: > The registry is always an option but most people are afraid of it. > That's why I was thinking of using the standard UNIX way of producing > "special" files in /dev. I *think* that most gnu-win32 users who > are familiar with UNIX would be familiar with that concept. > > With the registry, possibly we'd could support /dev as a "directory that > lives in the registry". Hmm, that might be a nice generalization for > other stuff, too. > A real /dev directory would be fine, too. How would you realize the mapping to the windows device? One possibility would be an implementation like the symlinks: The file has system attribute set and contains e.g.: !major,minor or !\\.\d: It's also a good solution, I think. In such a case I would nevertheless prefer the method with major/minor numbers. The implementation in the cygwin kernel would be much easier. Moreover, the big deal is: No other run time decision about path to device mapping is necessary and nevermore the cygwin kernel depends on fixed device names :-) Corinna