From: cgf AT cygnus DOT com (Christopher Faylor)
Subject: Re: New winsup snapshot 9/14/98
17 Sep 1998 18:46:50 -0700
Message-ID: <19980917213343.A20359.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 Fri, Sep 18, 1998 at 02:16:58AM +0200, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>Christopher Faylor wrote:
>> On Thu, Sep 17, 1998 at 02:04:42PM +0200, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>> >- 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.
>
>Why do you want to hide the information so deep in the NT soup,
>that you need a second method for non-NTFS? The current symlinks
>doesn't hide any information, and the method is strictly, both
>benefits of UNIX. Moreover, I think, you won't have time saving
>effects, because you will anyway have to call a CreateFile() and
>read the information (with one ReadFile against minimum three
>BackupRead).

Well, for one reason, I don't like the idea of doing essentially a "scanf"
or a strtok every time we open a file to determine major and minor numbers.
For another we have an existing problem which is that Windows 95 does not
currently have a method for setting UNIX protections.  If we are able to
deal with the Windows 95 problem then a method for giving files major and
minor device numbers is not far behind.

As far as NT soup is concerned, wasn't it you who suggested putting the
device information in the registry?

-- 
cgf AT cygnus DOT com
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