lyx has problem with network directory names

[Larry Hall (Cygwin)]

Enrico Forestieri wrote:
> David Arnstein writes:
>> I just tried to use the Cygwin port of lyx. It cannot cope with my
>> home directory, which appears as //fs-sj1-15/darnstein in Cygwin. This
>> is a network directory, obviously.
>>
>> When lyx starts up, it emits a complaint
>> 	QSettings: error creating /fs-sj1-15/darnstein/.qt
>>
>> When I try to save a lyx document to my home directory, lyx complains
>> when it presents its file browser dialog box. It says
>> 	Could not read directory /fs-sj1-15
>>
>> It appears that lyx is trying to access the root directory (/). It
>> does not seem to know how to interpret the Windows syntax "//."
> 
> This is because lyx uses the boostfs library with BOOST_POSIX defined,
> so any path of the form //xxx/yyy is normalized to /xxx/yyy.
> I understand that //machine/path is a windowism, but I think that it
> should be allowed on cygwin. Can this be seen a boost bug?
> 


Possibly.  But I expect boost folks would argue that using UNC syntax doesn't
fit with POSIX semantics.  Currently, the code keys off of BOOST_POSIX or
BOOST_WINDOWS defines to determine the API to use.  Under Cygwin, BOOST_POSIX
makes the most sense but with that definition comes the restriction of no UNC
paths.  Obviously, the workaround for now is to just mount the path in Cygwin
to create a POSIX path to use.  This will make Lyx happy without too much of a
burden for the user.


-- 
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
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