Re: Why not mount / at C: ?

[Earnie Boyd <earnie_boyd at yahoo dot com>]

--- Jean-Paul Le Fevre <J-P.LeFevre@cea.fr> wrote:
> 
> It's likely a FAQ, but since I still don't understand :
> Why is it discouraged to mount '/' at 'C:' ?
> The installer gives advice not to mount / at this natural location,
> while the FAQ *URGE* not to do so but without explanations.
> 
> I've been using cygwin for years on NT, 98, 2K with '/' being 'C:' without
> any problem. My Windows configuration is very similar to my Linux,
> Solaris, Unix config and I feel very confortable : I've almost nothing
> to change in my environment (variables, emacs, cvs, ssh, makefiles, ...)
> when I have to move from Unix to Windows.
> 
> At the beginning of August, I've installed a new release of Cygwin
> accepting the default mount : '/' on 'c:/cygwin'. As a result my environment
> is completely messed up ! I've to edit a lot of files to fix up the
> settings, being not sure when to change '/' in '\\', '/' in 'C:/cywin' or
> '//C/cywin', or 'C:\\cywin' or ....
> 
> So, why is it considered as a bad choice to have '/' at 'C:' ?
> 

Using C:/cygwin is recommended because it gives identity to the package on your
disk drive.  If you install to C:/ just means that you will have things
installed to C:/ that you might not realize was a part of the Cygwin package.

As for / vs \\ vs //, the unmounted drive notation has been changes and the
//C/ is being deprecated and should not be used.  Instead use /cygdrive/c/ to
indicate an unmounted drive or better yet mount it like so:
      mkdir /c
      mount [-b] C:/ /c
Then you can reference /c/somefile instead of /cygdrive/c/somefile or
//C/somefile.

I'm beginning to think that it would be best to not support unmounted drives in
the Cygwin environment.  It gets far to confusing and there are solutions
around not having the support.  Saying this, IMO, we should deprecate the
unmounted drives support.  What do you think?

Cheers,

=====
---
   Earnie Boyd: <mailto:earnie_boyd@yahoo.com>
            __Cygwin: POSIX on Windows__
Cygwin Newbies: <http://gw32.freeyellow.com/>
           __Minimalist GNU for Windows__
  Mingw32 List: <http://www.egroups.com/group/mingw32/>
    Mingw Home: <http://www.mingw.org/>

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