Re: [Mingw-users] Portable MSYS ?

[Keith M. <kei...@us...>]

On 07/05/11 12:56, stn021 wrote:
> It appears the the contents of the files in \etc are NOT important.
> My \etc\fstab always contains the line "D:\MinGW\   /mingw".

Which sets up the mount point for your MinGW directories, (as opposed to
MSYS directories), so the the /mingw/bin references within the MSYS
$PATH can be resolved to invoke e.g. D:\MinGW\bin\foo.exe

> Yet I can plug the USB-stick anywhere with different drive-letters and/or
> copy msys+etc to different drives (tried C:, D:, F:, G:) and it always
> works. No modifications necessary. Very nice :-)

I suspect that your mount point references may not always work as you
expect, if that D:\MinGW was a reference to the USB device when you set
up the installation.  If your USB drive mounts to E:\ on another host,
which lacks a suitably compatible MinGW installation at D:\MinGW, then
while your MSYS programs will continue to work okay, your MinGW
programs, (which live in /mingw/bin rather than /bin), likely
will not.

That was one of the "wrinkles" I had in mind, when I replied last night.
 We may need to add start-up code to /etc/profile, so we can rewrite
/etc/fstab to make drive letter assignments for paths on the USB device
follow any changes to that device assignment.  This is an issue I have
not yet needed to address, (because on every host where I've used my
portable MSYS installation, the device has always had identically the
same drive letter assignment), but I suspect it may only be a matter of
time before I have to deal with it.

-- 
Regards,
Keith.