Re: [MiNT] drive letters (was: Kernal questions)

[Martin-Eric Racine <q-funk@pp.fishpool.com>]

> |> > > As I said: changing the current behaviour (all available filesystems
> |> > > are mounted on u:\) will break existing programs. What's the benefit?
> |> > 
> |> > Well, yes, I would agree with Julian here. 
> |> 
> |> > BTW. drives are available in /dev anyways, though they're invisible. 
> |> > But try cd /dev/a
> |> 
> |> Let's see how Linux handles this:
> |> 
> |> fsck repairs/verifies drive letters, but the drives are mounted as 
> |> filesystems.  For example, floppy is accessed as /floppy and cd as 
> |> /cdrom, but other drives are mounted as filesystems.
> 
> What are you talking about??  
>
> There are no such things as "drive letters" in Unix, all you have are
> device files or plain files as filesystem images.  

Indeed.  Everything is a unified filesystem with device (file)names.

> Moreover, if you fsck a mounted filesystem you'll get what you deserve
> (i.e. a corrupted filesystem).

Last time I checked, fsck effectively does "fsck.ext2 e:" __NOT__ 
"fsck /root" so it seems that filesystem checkers use drive letters.

Anyways...

Basically, this is the approach I advocate for MiNT:

1) GEM apps access drive letters (ie: C:\clipbrd\scrap.txt)
2) CLI only access real UNIX paths (ie: /tmp/screen.copy)

In other words, drive letters should be absent from / since U:
is our UNIX  /  (ie: root), but there should still be a way 
for GEM to access paths in the traditional DOS way.

Likewise, CLI should access /floppy while GEM wants A:\ drive.

You get the idea?  ;-)

----------------------------------------------------------------
  Martin-Eric Racine * http://www.pp.fishpool.com/~q-funk/M-E/
  The Atari TT030 Homepage * http://members.tripod.com/~TT030/
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