Re: [h-e-w] Another problem with MinGW shell in Emacs: directory tracking

[Stephen Leake]

Kai Grossjohann <address@hidden> writes:

> On a more serious note, I usually cd somewhere, then invoke some
> command, then cd another place, invoke more commands, and only then
> do I notice that I need to look at a file.

Fair enough.

> > Second, what you did works for me when I use Cygwin bash as the
> > sub-shell. I haven't tried it with Mingw sh; maybe that's a
> > difference.
> 
> Hm.  Interesting.  How come?  Is your Emacs cygwinized?  That would
> cause it to grok Posix paths.  Or does Cygwin bash print "e:/foo"
> when you enter "pwd"?

Well, your original example didn't include "pwd", just "cd". Emacs
watches for "cd", and Cygwin bash accepts "cd e:/foo", so both are
happy.

You can use 'cygpath' to convert between cygwin and Windows path
syntax.

> > Ok, three points; there is an emacs library that handles cygwin
> > paths; maybe it handles mingw paths as well. cygmount.el, or
> > something; I don't use it.
> 
> Ah, cygmount.  Totally forgot about it.  Hm.  Hmmm...  That allows
> Emacs to grok /c/foo style paths.  Yeah, that might work.

Ok, good.

> Maybe I'm trying the wrong way to get Unixish behavior from Windows.
> Should I try to get used to cmd.exe and learn how to use its
> conditional constructs and looping?

No. NO! NOOO!!!! :).

> Or maybe I should migrate to a more fully cygwinized environment.
> Then I would use Windows only for Outlook and Word. Is this a better
> approach?

"better" is up to you, but that's what I do. I'd get away from Windows
entirely if it wasn't for all those MS Office docs I keep getting in
the email.

There is also a pure Cygwin Emacs, but that only runs in an X server
(available from Cygwin). I haven't actually tried it, but I'd bet it's
slow, and won't play well with the Windows Gnu Ada compiler, which is
_not_ a Cygwin app (I do everything in Ada).

However, there is one caveat. The Cygwin maintainer of gcc keeps
complaining that he'd like to turn it over to someone else. So I get
the message that RedHat isn't very interested in maintaining Cygwin.
I'm not sure what to do with that information :). 

-- 
-- Stephe