Re: [PATCH] Mingw support for grub2

[Christian Franke]

Vesa Jääskeläinen wrote:
> Bean wrote:
>   
> > On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 12:04 AM, Vesa Jääskeläinen <address@hidden> wrote:
> >     
> > > Bean wrote:
> > >       
> > > > Yes, it works, although mingw can't use device names like /dev/sda,
> > > > but it can use windows special name //./PHYSICALDRIVE0.
> > > >         
> > > That should be with back slashes ('\'). Or is there some hack somewhere
> > > to support that?
> > >       
> > Hi,
> >
> > Mingw would translate / to \, so both are ok. But using / is more
> > clear, as \ is the escape character in cygwin shell, so we need to use
> > two of them, \\\\.\\PHYSICALDRIVE0.
> >     
>
> In cygwin shell... yes... but mingw programs are not meant to be run
> under that. Mingw programs are native windows programs.
>
>
>   

Unlike Cygwin, Mingw does not provide an extra library layer. Most 
standard library functions directly link to msvcrt.dll.

The Win32 API (like the DOS API) itself accepts both / and \, only the 
user level tools usually don't. This is likely because in the early 
(CP/M->DOS) days, someone decided to use '/' as the option char. Later, 
when path names are 'borrowed' from Unix, it was too late :-)

In fact, all these work to open the first disk:
h = CreateFile("\\\\.\\PhysicalDrive0", ...)
h = CreateFile("\\\\./PhysicalDrive0", ...)
h = CreateFile("//.\\PhysicalDrive0", ...)
h = CreateFile("//./PhysicalDrive0", ...)

Christian