From: cgf AT cygnus DOT com (Christopher Faylor)
Subject: Re: New winsup snapshot 9/14/98
17 Sep 1998 05:53:42 -0700
Message-ID: <19980917082634.A18053.cygnus.cygwin32.developers@cygnus.com>
References: <19980914141243 DOT 37248 AT cygnus DOT com>
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To: Corinna Vinschen <corinna DOT vinschen AT cityweb DOT de>,
        DJ Delorie <dj AT delorie DOT com>, cygwin32-developers AT cygnus DOT com

On Thu, Sep 17, 1998 at 02:04:42PM +0200, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>DJ Delorie wrote:
>> How about this idea: Create a real /dev directory in
>> posix-land.  If you look for, say, "/dev/scd0", check for
>> "/dev/scd0.dll" and support an API for extending
>> device-space.  The API would have to be passed the name you
>> found it as (scd0) and you'd have to have one copy of the
>> dll for each device (unless we grokked the trailing digits)
>> but it would be infinitely expandable.  Probably a lot of
>> work too.
>
>Sounds like loadable modules as in linux. Cool idea!
>What do you think about the following modification?
>
>- Default dir: /dev          , else, if non existant
>               $CYGROOT/dev  , overridable by
>               $CYGWIN_DEVDIR
>
>- Create device entries with mknod(1) like symlinks, containing
>
>    !<device>major,minor,[bcp]

Actually, I'd rather not use the current symlink route.  On Windows NT
NTFS partitions we could use extended attributes.  On Windows 9[58] we
could possibly have an "index file" in each directory which supplied
things like UNIX permissions and device types.  That would work for
symlinks, too.

I've always wanted to add a /proc filesystem to cygwin, also.
And, maybe even a mountable "registry" filesystem.

-- 
cgf AT cygnus DOT com
http://www.cygnus.com/