Re: A proposal for a Cygnus naming convention

[Christopher Faylor <cgf at redhat dot com>]

On Wed, May 08, 2002 at 08:38:32AM +0200, Mellman Thomas wrote:
>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>From: Christopher Faylor [mailto:cgf-cygwin@cygwin.com]
>>>Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2002 5:19 PM
>>>To: cygwin@cygwin.com
>>>Subject: Re: A proposal for a Cygnus naming convention
>>>
>>>
>>>On Tue, May 07, 2002 at 09:32:00AM +0200, Mellman Thomas wrote:
>>>>Given the registry name:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>HKLM\software\Cygnus solutions\cygwin\mounts v2\/
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>May I suggest that the blank in the name is superfluous and problematic
>>>>for processing by Unix-type tools - even in the registry.  Bill may
>>>>feel vindicated that *his* OS tolerates blanks, but does it really add
>>>>significant readibility?
>>>
>>>You can suggest anything, however, what you are suggesting 
>>>makes no sense:
>>>
>>>1) The cygwin registry entry is not intended to be manipulated by
>>>   "Unix-type tools".  Use *mount* if you want to manipulate it.
>>>
>>>2) Changing the name would break backwards compatibility.
>>>
>>>3) Even if you wanted to use "Unix-type" tools, a space is really not an
>>>   obstacle.  Unix certainly can deal with spaces.
>>>
>>>So, bottom line is that there is absolutely no way that we'll be
>>>changing anything.  You should just be considering the registry to be a
>>>black box, anyway.  The cygwin DLL deals just fine with the current
>>>scheme.
>
>I didn't mean to say that anything needs to be changed.

I hope you have mirrors so that you can see behind yourself while you're
backpeddling.

If you weren't proposing that anything should be changed, then why did
you even bother sending your message?

>It was only a suggestion for the future.

Oh.  So, you *were* proposing that something should be changed.

If I somehow gave you the impression that anything you sent would be
taken as a high priority task, then I apologize.  I'm not sure how
I gave you the impression that I would take anything as you said
as other than a suggestion.

>But to suggest that the registry is a black box is simply gates-ian.
>That's a big advantage of unix: it doesn't try to hide things from the
>users.  Hopefully, cygwin developers aren't so close that they're
>seduced by the dark side.

And, here we avoid addressing the issues and go off on a tangent.  I'd
have a lot easier time with your points if you weren't insistent on
being insulting.  Smugly mentioning "Bill", suggesting dark sides, and
calling things "gatesian" probably provides you with some kind of
nebulous feeling of superiority however, it really doesn't do much to
advance your suggestion.

Lets focus back on my response to your suggestion.

How would you propose maintaining backwards compatibility?  Are you
suggesting that we should eliminate spaces in the registry names and
cause older versions of cygwin to be incapable of reading registry
entries created by newer versions?  And, the rationale for doing this is
purely aesthetic?  If so, were you going to be around after your
"suggestion for the future" was implemented to handle the inevitable
mailing list complaints?

You also haven't suggested a good reason for ignoring the use of
perfectly functional mount command and the mount function.  I suspect
(although I'm sure you will do some more backpeddling denials here)
that you probably didn't know that the mount command manipulated
the registry and that you're probably equally unaware that there
(obviously) are functions available for doing things programatically.

You haven't even provided a good basis for making this fundamental
change other than "spaces bad -- Microsoft use spaces!".  The concept
that space present a challenge to "Unix-type tools" is really rather
laughable.  In absence of details on what your problems are, the only
conclusion that I can draw is that you are probably rather unskilled in
the use of said tools.

cgf


--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Bug reporting:         http://cygwin.com/bugs.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/