Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] New package: stow
Does stow have support for hard links at all? No, not at present. If not is that an easy thing to add in? It probably is, although I can't spend any time on it in the foreseeable future. Such an option would make stow more useful on Cygwin, IMHO. I think you're right, for the following reasons. One, as I said in the announcement, Cygwin implements symlinks as Windows shortcuts, which are broken. Therefore, stow will only be useful for installing software that is used exclusively within Cygwin (which interprets the shortcuts to emulate POSIX behavior) and that doesn't install any DLLs (since Windows won't interpret the symlinks correctly). Two, Cygwin implements hard links as file copies. Windows file systems don't support hard links, so this is probably the best that can be done. So 'ln a b' is really the same as 'cp -p a b'. Now that approach has obvious disadvantages (it uses twice the disk space; changes in either file aren't reflected in the other, since they're different files), but for software installation it would have the advantage of solving the symlink problem. Installed files (including DLLs) would just be copied into the installation directory, where Windows can use them. The original, stowed copy (e.g. /usr/local/stow/emacs) would become superfluous, except as a map of which files to delete if you want to uninstall the package. Also, the problem of modifications to the target not being reflected in the source probably isn't very important for software installation, since the package files don't get changed much. So, if someone wanted to pursue this, I think it would be useful. Andrew. -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/
Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] New package: stow
On May 18 14:41, Andrew Schulman wrote: Two, Cygwin implements hard links as file copies. Windows file systems don't support hard links, so this is probably the best that can be done. So 'ln a b' is really the same as 'cp -p a b'. Huh? NTFS supports hardlinks from the beginning and Cygwin supports creating hardlinks on NTFS since... oh, lemme see... 1997. Corinna -- Corinna Vinschen Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to Cygwin Project Co-Leader mailto:cygwin@cygwin.com Red Hat, Inc. -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/
Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] New package: stow
Two, Cygwin implements hard links as file copies. Windows file systems don't support hard links, so this is probably the best that can be done. So 'ln a b' is really the same as 'cp -p a b'. Huh? NTFS supports hardlinks from the beginning and Cygwin supports creating hardlinks on NTFS since... oh, lemme see... 1997. Okay. My mistake-- I'm using VFAT here. -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/
[ANNOUNCEMENT] New package: stow
The stow package is now available in the Cygwin distribution. Stow is an installation manager for local software packages. It creates sets of symlinks from the installed location (e.g. /usr/local) to a stow directory (e.g. /usr/local/stow/emacs) where the real files live. This allows you to keep packages separate, while making them appear to be installed in the same place. Note that because stow uses symlinks to install files, it will probably only be effective for software that is used only in the Cygwin environment and doesn't install any DLLs. The reason is that Cygwin symlinks are implemented in the Windows file system as shortcuts (.lnk files), but Windows shortcuts are fundamentally broken: Windows will not, as a rule (the only exception being for GUI operations in Windows Explorer), interpret a shortcut as a pointer to a file. Cygwin corrects this and emulates the Unix behavior, but Windows programs won't, and PATH searches for DLLs won't follow shortcuts either. Source homepage:http://directory.fsf.org/stow.html License:GPL Please address questions and bug reports to the Cygwin mailing list cygwin@cygwin.com. Andrew E. Schulman *** To update your installation, click on the Install Cygwin now link on the http://cygwin.com/ web page. This downloads setup.exe to your system. Then, run setup and answer all of the questions. If you have questions or comments, please send them to the Cygwin mailing list at: cygwin@cygwin.com . *** CYGWIN-ANNOUNCE UNSUBSCRIBE INFO *** If you want to unsubscribe from the cygwin-announce mailing list, look at the List-Unsubscribe: tag in the email header of this message. Send email to the address specified there. It will be in the format: [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you need more information on unsubscribing, start reading here: http://sources.redhat.com/lists.html#unsubscribe-simple Please read *all* of the information on unsubscribing that is available starting at this URL. *** -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/
Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] New package: stow
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The stow package is now available in the Cygwin distribution. Stow is an installation manager for local software packages. It creates sets of symlinks from the installed location (e.g. /usr/local) to a stow directory (e.g. /usr/local/stow/emacs) where the real files live. This allows you to keep packages separate, while making them appear to be installed in the same place. Note that because stow uses symlinks to install files, it will probably only be effective for software that is used only in the Cygwin environment and doesn't install any DLLs. The reason is that Cygwin symlinks are implemented in the Windows file system as shortcuts (.lnk files), but Windows shortcuts are fundamentally broken: Windows will not, as a rule (the only exception being for GUI operations in Windows Explorer), interpret a shortcut as a pointer to a file. Cygwin corrects this and emulates the Unix behavior, but Windows programs won't, and PATH searches for DLLs won't follow shortcuts either. Does stow have support for hard links at all? If not is that an easy thing to add in? Such an option would make stow more useful on Cygwin, IMHO. Chris -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/
