RFE?: CygWinDir in ENV? (was Re: How does one find where Cygwin was installed from Windows?)

[Linda Walsh <cygwin at tlinx dot org>]

Larry Hall (Cygwin) wrote:
> >     What do you think? 
>
> Actually, this has been discussed already and has been resolved by
> having 1.7's 'setup.exe' putting the Cygwin root installation directory
> in... the registry!  See HKLM/Software/Cygwin/setup, the "rootdir"
> value.
>
> I know, it's not in the environment.  That might be nicer.  But such
> a change could spoil my "there's no good way" statement so I can't
> endorse it. ;-)
---
	Plblblblb....! (*raz*)

	Um...so..um...
	I know it could spoil your day and all...but it really would
be more *linux* like if it was added to the environment variables.

	But the environment variables, in windows, get their initial
values from the registry!  So ...well, you could still complain that
since they start from the windows reg, they are contaminated?...

	I know it wouldn't be "ideal" for perverse reasons,
but maybe in "1.7" (or even the next maint release -- since whoever
"owns" the cygwin-package that owns "startxwin.bat" may want to fix
their package's startup ".bat" file, sooner rather than "later"), a
"CYGWINDIR" string value could be added under :
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment"
(assuming installed at machine level and not in a per user).

I forget, does Cygwin offer the option of installing for 1 user vs. "all users"?
I only remember it being installed for "all"...?

	Besides your distaste for something that could make it more difficult
to complain, might that be a more "generic" solution?

	Then anything else in "Cygwin" that uses paths -- including
setup's "cygwin.bat" could use %CygWinDir% -- even registry string values
could be change to expandable string values (REG_SZ -> REG_EXPAND_SZ)
that could use %CygWinDir% in their expansions -- so even fewer places
would have to have the "Cygwin-install" location expanded as text in
the registry (or any other batch files).

	Whatcha think?  I'm sure I'll post something before too long that
you can complain about again...I can almost guarantee that! ;^&

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/