From: andrewd AT axonet DOT com DOT au (Andrew Dalgleish)
Subject: RE: Update/more questions on mount points
24 Sep 1998 22:10:41 -0700
Message-ID: <91A8FD196436D1118EC2006008186C960D933D.cygnus.cygwin32.developers@server1.axonet.com.au>
To: cygwin32-developers AT cygnus DOT com

I have some suggestions:

Keep the mount command non-interactive so it can be used in scripts.
Add command line options to "mount even if dir does not exist" and/or
"create missing directories".

Add a "remount" option which does not unmount unless the new mount is
valid.
This will simplify remounting the root dir.

The biggest problem with the "//c" hack is using the same syntax as UNC
names.
From the user's point of view, it is the same as automatically mounting
"/mnt/c" but with a different prefix.

*Please* make the "/mnt/" prefix modifiable (eg registry or environment
variable).

Have three mount tables - global, user, and temporary (until the current
shell exits).

Put the automatically mounted drives in the "temporary" table.
As long as the drive is mounted automatically it does not *need* to be
persisted.

Use the same interface for handling the automatically mounted drives as
used for the persisted mount tables.
This reduces the amount of code for "magic" paths, no matter whether the
prefix is "//c" or "/mnt/c".

What directory would you automatically mount for "/"?
You can't rely on the registry because if the user plays with the
registry and torches their mount table, how do you know what's left?

I suggest that the order the mount tables are strored in the registry is
reversed.
At present the root dir is the last entry, and it's key name depends on
the number of other mounts.
If it was the first key it would simplify resetting the root mount by
using a .REG file.
(eg you could keep an "emergency"  .REG file to remount the root. The
..REG file could be created by the installer, or just manually exported.)

Regards,
Andrew Dalgleish