mismatched dll

[Williams, Gerald S (Jerry)]

Brian Dessent wrote:
> The CBCP installer plays nice, notices that the user has
> Cygwin installed with the most recent DLL, so it does not
> install its own copy.  Everyone is happy.  But then say
> six months later the under removes Cygwin [...]

This looks like a job for reference counters. All we need
to do is have Cygwin keep track of who's referring to it
and delete itself when the last one's gone.

We can implement it as a rootkit that intercepts attempts
to add or delete executables or DLLs. Then if you add an
executable that depends on Cygwin, it can automatically
grab the latest version off of the nearest mirror. And if
you delete the last file that depends on cygwin1.dll, it
can pop up the following message:

   "Warning, Cygwin deleted. Should I reformat and
    install Linux?"

Anything is possible with software, right?

gsw

P.S. Of course this rootkit would disable any antivirus
     known to conflict with Cygwin, just to be safe. :-)