Re: Can someone explain the 'obvious' to me...or is it a Grimm's Bro. tale...?

[Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha at cs dot nyu dot edu>]

On Sun, 9 Mar 2003, linda w (cyg) wrote:

> I really _think_ (maybe I don't know what I want), but I think I
> want to setup my cygroot -> c:\.
>
> Now I know this isn't recommended, but why/whynot?  The
> only reason I heard, which sounded a bit weak, was, "Well what if
> some new program comes in and creates a /usr, /var, /tmp...etc
> TLD?  Then it might stomp on Cygwin files.  Is that the only reason
> because some program may someday write into those directories and
> may write files with the same names into those directories?
>
> The thing is...I think it'd be a bit cool to see some better
> merging of the Win/cyg env.  Like setting %Program Files% =>
> /usr/local/bin?  or /opt?, Setting Documents&Settings ->home,
> etc.
>
> At the very least, I'd have less to worry about with which set of
> programs I'm using -- with the path's relative to root being the
> same (now whether or not individual tools handle both / and \ is
> another matter, but at least \ would equal /, for the most part.
>
> Of course, I would expect that "Find C:\" would return nothing
> if I did that, but find / would return my entire fs and not just
> the cygwin subtree....
>
> Comments on my lunacy/flights of fancy? :-)
> Linda

Hmm, note that there is a difference between "not recommended" and
outright "prohibited".  Nothing really prevents you from making 'C:\' your
'/'.  Oh, you may get a warning from setup, but it's more of a "you better
know what you're doing" type of thing...  Some of the prominent members of
this list use 'C:\' as '/', so it certainly is *possible* to do (and there
seems to exist a larger group of people using 'N:\' as '/', where N: is
some drive other than C:).

It is not advisable to a general newbie, mostly because if (and when)
problems do arise (and they are *likely* to, with all the different
software out there), people who don't know what they're doing are going to
bug the list, which is high-volume as it is.  The intent, as I understand
it, is to avoid the "I made C:\ my root, and now it doesn't work, and I
don't know enough Cygwin/Unix/whatever else to fix it, please help" type
of messages.

This is not to say that people who *do* know what they're doing never run
into those kinds of problems, but they are at least expected to take a
shot at diagnosing/fixing them themselves, and they accept the risk.
There is also an added possibility that every time you report a problem on
the list, you'll be expected to make sure that 'C:\'=>'/' didn't cause it,
or to be able to reproduce it in a "recommended"  environment (or you'll
simply be told not to make 'C:\' your '/').

So, to rehash this for the archives:
Do *not* make 'C:\' your '/' *unless* you know what you are doing and are
prepared to handle the problems that *might* arise.
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_		pechtcha at cs dot nyu dot edu
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor at watson dot ibm dot com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

Oh, boy, virtual memory! Now I'm gonna make myself a really *big* RAMdisk!
  -- /usr/games/fortune


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