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Re: MSYS mode (continue)


On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 10:15:10AM +0200, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>On Jul 25 16:53, Christopher Faylor wrote:
>> On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 02:20:50PM -0400, Charles Wilson wrote:
>> >> But underlying there's still a normal Cygwin DLL and
>> >> most tools could just be copied verbatim since they don't need this
>> >> extra functionality.
>> >
>> >And that's the bit where I disagree.  Sure, some scripting tools might 
>> >not need adjustment, so long as their interpreter was $MSYS-enabled 
>> >(e.g. automake -> msys-perl, msys-bash) -- because the script will "see" 
>> >dos-style paths, so its interpreter better be able to handle them.
>> >
>> >But unless you restrict yourself to only passing around relative paths 
>> >(or god forbid, that old "unity mount" idea), any .exe will need to live 
>> >in one world or the other. Otherwise, how would paths be interpreted? 
>> >Using which tools' mount table?
>> >
>> >Naturally from the command line I can compensate:
>> >
>> >msys$  /c/cygwin/bin/foobar.exe $(/c/cygwin/bin/cygpath.exe -u $(cygpath 
>> >-d /msys/mount/table/path) )
>> >
>> >but yee gods that'd be annoying in any automated setting.
>> 
>> I don't know if this helps but the vague plan is to now have two DLLs
>> where before you only had one.  You'd still be providing "MSYS" binaries
>> which relied on "MSYS.dll" but, under the hood, MSYS.dll would be only a
>> small dll which relied on cygwin1.dll for all of the heavy lifting.
>> 
>> You'd still have a normal MSYS distribution and it would still, in theory,
>> support everything (with the possible exception of very lax security) that
>> the old MSYS did.  An MSYS release would consist of MSYS*.dll, cygwin1.dll,
>> bash, etc.
>
>Here's where I disagree.  I think the executables should *not* rely on
>MSYS.dll being available.  Ideally the executables are linked against
>the Cygwin DLL and MSYS.dll is called as a side-by-side implementation.
>So, if MSYS.dll isn't available, they still function as normal Cygwin
>executables.  That's why I proposed the solution(s) in
>http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-developers/2013-07/msg00003.html


>Assuming you implement it the first way, you get an executable linked
>against a crt0.o which tries a LoadLibrary("MSYS.dll").  If it fails,
>the executable does business as usual.  It will not fail, because
>there's still the Cygwin DLL.
>
>If LoadLib worked, crt0 calls GetProcAddress("__msys_hook") and then
>__msys_hook().  __msys_hook collects the hook function pointers and
>sends them to the CYgwin DLL via a call to cygwin_internal(CW_HOOK,
>&hook_list).  Voila, the hooks are set up, we're in MSYS mode.
>
>
>Another alternative would be if the Cygwin DLL itself had a switch to
>load the MSYS dll (export CYGWIN=MSYS ;)).  This would allows MSYS mode
>even with completely unchanged executables.
>
>
>> I don't think anyone was proposing seamless interoperation between MSYS
>> and cygwin.
>
>Yes, I honestly think this would be possible and desirable.  MSYS is
>just a tiny change for a specific task in comparison to the default
>Cygwin mode.  MSYS would concentrate on this task and the required tools
>for this task and the rest could be stock Cygwin distro.
>
>
>Btw., this does *not* mean I agree with all changes MSYS is doing.  I
>have a hard time to see the necessity changing the /etc/fstab layout,
>for instance, since it doesn't add or change anything you can't have
>with the standard fstab.

So, you did.  I missed the ramifications of that message.  I guess
that's why Chuck was confused.  I'm suggesting something different so
we're all confused.

This does not address the problem that there are local modifications in
some MSYS utilities.  This doesn't solve the problem of make
understanding c:\foo.  Doesn't MSYS bash allow constructs of the form
c:\foo without making that c:foo?  If so, the DLL isn't going to help
there.

I don't think that we should be seeing the word "msys" throughout the
DLL source code.  The hooks could all be just named "cygwin_hook"
generic and, maybe we should recognize something like a
"CYGWIN=PRELOAD=MSYS.dll".  I don't know how the MSYS folks would
feel about that however.  Having to tell their users that they need
to set an environment variable before they do anything seems like it
would be a maintenance headache.

As far as /etc/fstab is concerned, since they were the first to
implement the notion, I would assume that they don't want to have to
tell their userbase to change any more than we would want to have to
tell every Cygwin user that they have to edit a file to make the
next version of Cygwin work correctly.

cgf


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