Does xinit do magic stuff?

[luke dot kendall at cisra dot canon dot com dot au]

I have just found that on a very recent Cygwin, I can never ever start
X using our simple shell script (just posted: cisraxwin.sh).  The script
does this:

    runs ~/.xserverrc if it exists,
       else it runs Xwin with $XSERVER_ARGS;
    waits for the X server to start;
       else fails
    if ~/.xinitrc exists, it feeds that to a shell,
       else runs an xterm and then wmaker
    kills Xwin when the window manager exits

But this works 50% of the time on my machine (with a weeks-old Cygwin),
and fails 100% of the time on a new machine (with a days-old Cygwin).

But if I run xinit with the options that I'd chosen for Xwin, it works
100% of the time.

Clearly, the thing to do is to change our script to use xinit.  We
thought xinit's logic was basically the same as what I've described
above, for our script.  But it seems it does some other magic that's
not mentioned in the man page.

Would anyone tell me what the extra "magic" is?  Does it set up shared
memory, or named pipes, or similar?

I ask only to try to understand.  I think the correct fix is to use
xinit.

luke