Native symlinks and setup.exe

[Linda Walsh]

Thorsten Kampe wrote:
> Tar's task is to unpack what's in the archive. So converting is out 
> of question. You can ask the maintainer of the affected packages to 
> create the symlinks in the postinstall script.
---
Is it a "special" tar, or is it the normal version of tar that 
runs under Cygwin?

I would assume that the install scripts run under the cygwin-environment.
That includes paying attention to the global value of CYGWIN.

If you set CYGWIN in your windows environment variables (recommended),
then it will always be set before any cygwin or setup program runs.
Setup isn't going to explicitly clear CYGWIN of its values, unless
they *happen* to be "invalid" -- and even then, I doubt it would modify
the user-set value of CYGWIN.

When I install programs, tar has always honored the global value of
CYGWIN I set in the system env vars.  (System is recommended over 
User Env, since cygwin can run as multiple users, and if you want 
consistent cygwin operation, you should set it before any cygwin
processes have started.

Is someone claiming that values in the System-Env var CYGWIN are
ignored by programs being installed?

NOTE: it is known and considered a "feature", that Cygwin ignores
MS-mountpoints mounted with mountd or linkd (link directory) and
treats them as symlinks.  This prohibits user control and redirection
of installed programs and disables the linux equivalent of 
mount --bind "thisdir" "onthisdir".




--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple