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Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:31:10 -0400
From: Ralph Hempel <rhempel AT bmts DOT com>
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Subject: Re: Cygwin 1.7 on a FLASH Drive
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Larry Hall (Cygwin) wrote:
> Ralph Hempel wrote:
>> Yes, I've read the FAQ on making Cygwin portable :-)
>>
>> I'd like to have a complete Cygwin environment on a FLASH
>> drive, but of course using that drive to compile stuff in
>> my HOME directory will be awfully slow.
> 
> Why is that?

Creating, wand writing files is much slower on a FLASH
drive than on a hard disk. Not a big problem for a few
files here and there, but if I'm compiling gcc and binutils for
cross compiling to an ARM (for example) it might be MUCH
slower.

>> Is there a way to create a symlink of a directory on a local
>> hard drive to the cygwin /home/username/ directory?
> 
> No, not across volumes.  You could try 'junction', which does
> something "similar" in Windows land.

Just similar enough to be dangerous from what I hear...

>> Are there any features in 1.7 that will make a portable
>> cygwin easier to maintain?
> 
> There will be no mount table in the registry.

This is, of course, very good.

Now that I think about it, one way that having a common Cygwin install
will help me is on my development laptop. I'm running XP as the host
OS and have a lot of virtual Win2K machines set up for testing in
clean sandboxes.

By having one canonical "known good" Cygwin install that's visible
as a shared drive to the virtual machines, I think I can get
what I want without using a USB drive.

Sorry for the noise, just musing aloud I guess...

Ralph

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