[darcs-users] Huge mess moving to mac

[Max Battcher]

On 4/17/07, Yitzchak Gale <gale at sefer.org> wrote:
> > cygwin...
>
> and
>
> > Microsoft's Windows Services For Unix...
> > Although, the Windows API... will barf at differently cased files.
>
> Are you sure these work? AFAIK, case sensitivity is
> built in to NTFS and FAT. So it is cygwin and SFU that will
> barf, not the WinAPI.

NTFS is natively case-sensitive.  Windows APIs and Software are
purposefully case-preserving and case-insensitive.  Windows APIs and
Explorer et al are not guaranteed to handle case-sensitivity and are
certainly not optimized for it (considering the vast majority of users
use case-insensitivity).

Microsoft guarantees that case-sensitivity should work with SFU
versions of the POSIX libraries and SFU-included Unix tools.  That's
just about all that Microsoft guarantees.  There's apparently a
Registry Switch to tell Windows APIs and Explorer to play nice with
case-sensitivity, but I've seen little documentation for it.  I think
at best you'll see some reductions in file I/O execution time and
Explorer process time...  at worst I think you can expect to find
instances where WinAPI or Explorer (or any other major software for
Windows) will bomb on you.

Cygwin requires a special mount and I think that for file accesses
across that special mount it redirects its own POSIX libraries to use
a lower-level file I/O than it normally would, but basically it
follows the same pattern of SFU it would appear.  Cygwin and SFU in
combination (albeit somewhat redundant) should have no problems.

-- 
--Max Battcher--
http://www.worldmaker.net/