/usr/local/bin symbolic link disappears every time cyg setup is run

[Kurt Franke]

Larry Hall (Cygwin <reply-to-list-only-lh <at> cygwin.com> writes:

> 
> On 09/03/2014 05:19 PM, Dat Head wrote:
> > I have a symlink from /usr/local/bin to /3TB-external/bin/CYGWIN to keep
> > architecture independent bin files on an external drive for portability.
> >
> > every time I run cyg setup.exe it removes the symlink and creates an
> > empty /usr/local/bin directory - is it really supposed to do that?
> > are there some cygwin pkgs (none that I have installed because it has
> > never put anything there) that put files there? (even if there are,
> > it shouldn't zap the symlink)
> 
> /usr/local is a common subtree on Linux systems, common enough that
> setup makes sure it exists by creating it.  Setup, though, doesn't
> know about all the variations of symlinks that Cygwin itself does
> so its pretty heavy-handed when it comes to symlinks that get in
> its way.  As a work-around, you could script setup so that it
> recreates the symlink you want with each run.  You could even make
> your own "mirror" which provides a package that contains only a
> postinstall script that does this, so that anytime you run setup,
> you could install or reinstall this package from your own mirror
> to make this more generic and integrated.  Another alternative
> is to take a look at setup's source and see if you can create a
> patch to handle this better.  You can probably think up some
> other possibilities for a solution that you like even better. 
> 

I just use /usr/local as a mount point:

$> df /usr/local/
Filesystem                1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
D:/cygwin-local/usr/local 766838780 405249584 361589196  53% /usr/local

setup may create any structure under this mount point,
but this has no effect in cygwin due to the mount will hide
the previous files/directories at this location

this methode prevents me from putting directory tres inside cygwin tree
which are not delivered via cygwin setup.
I do this also for /home


snip from /etc/fstab :
D:/cygwin-local/usr/local /usr/local some_fs binary 0 0
D:/cygwin-local/home /home some_fs binary 0 0



regards

kf







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