Re: cygdrive prefix

[Shaddy Baddah <helium at shaddybaddah dot name>]

Hi Andy,

Andy Koppe wrote:
> 2009/9/16 Dave Korn:
>   
> > > whatever) prefixes when accessing stuff from the other side of the
> > > fence.
> > >       
> >  Never mind the fence, what colour are we going to paint the bikeshed?
> >
> >  This is purely a matter of taste.
> >     
>
> Exactly. I didn't mean to suggest that Cygwin should go into C:\ by
> default. And yes, I'm quite capable of not installing MingW into the
> same place.
>
> My real gripe is with setup telling me off about putting Cygwin in the
> root dir ON EVERY SINGLE UPDATE.
>
>   
I apologise profusely for not letting this one just close as some have
expressed they wish the thread would (close). But I think I may have
one valuable contribution for you Andy.

Even with a customisation of setup.exe to not warn you everytime on
installing to c:/, I think a better solution for you is to remap root
(inspite of the ug giving a caveat for attempting this). From the 1.7
user guide
(http://cygwin.com/1.7/cygwin-ug-net/using.html#mount-table):

A correct root directory is quite essential to the operation of
Cygwin. A default root directory is evaluated at startup so a fstab
entry for the root directory is not necessary. If it's wrong, nothing
will work as expected. Therefore, the root directory evaluated by
Cygwin itself is treated as an immutable mount point and can't be
overridden in /etc/fstab... unless you think you really know what
you're doing. In this case, use the override flag in the options field
in the /etc/fstab file. Since this is a dangerous thing to do, do so
at your own risk.

Well, if you made an fstab like this (this is what I have tried on my
installation):

c:/      /    ntfs binary,override 0 0
c:/software/cygwin/bin /bin        ntfs binary 0 0
c:/software/cygwin/etc /etc        ntfs binary 0 0
c:/software/cygwin/lib /lib        ntfs binary 0 0
c:/software/cygwin/tmp /tmp        ntfs binary 0 0
c:/software/cygwin/usr /usr        ntfs binary 0 0
c:/software/cygwin/bin /usr/bin        ntfs binary 0 0
c:/software/cygwin/lib /usr/lib        ntfs binary 0 0
c:/software/cygwin/dev /dev        ntfs binary 0 0

you can achieve what you want (or I think you meant), whilst still
demarcating the cygwin installation from the rest of Windows. I know
it's a little convaluted, but IMO, it is still better than dropping
cygwin straight into c:/. The fact that setup.exe would stop bothering
you is a nice extra.

HTH and over and out (on this one),
Shaddy


--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple