Re: [Mingw-users] Portable MSYS ?

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

On 08/05/11 22:05, Bj Raz wrote:
> Here is my 2 cents, I don't know if this is completely relevant, but;
> in an ini file where you are telling windows I want you to run on the
> root of this device, a file called; 'xyz.abc' you can tell it run it
> on "\zxy.abc" can you tell msys to run on the root directly? as "/"
> apposed to "/<drive letter>/folders"?

No, this will not work.  Each mount table record in /etc/fstab defines a
simple mapping of winpath to mountpath, in the form:

  winpath <white-space> mountpath

White-space is forbidden within either of the path specifications, (and
quoting to circumvent this is not supported).  Both path specifications
must be absolute, with winpath in Windows format[*] and mountpath in
POSIX format.

An absolute path in Windows format MUST include the drive-letter; (if
you omit it, then your path is RELATIVE to the root of the drive which
is currently selected as default.  I don't know if MSYS will even allow
such a drive-relative winpath specification, but if it does, it WILL
break as soon as you cd to any directory on a different drive from
the MSYS root, because your mount specifications will then have a
winpath which is relative to the root of the wrong drive.

[*] IIRC, slashes and backslashes are considered equivalent within the
winpath specification; MSYS' own mount command writes it with regular
POSIX style slashes.  mountpath is ALWAYS written in the POSIX style.

-- 
Regards,
Keith.