newlib-cygwin/winsup/doc/cygwinenv.xml

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<sect1 id="using-cygwinenv"><title>The <envar>CYGWIN</envar> environment
variable</title>

<sect2 id="cygwinenv-implemented-options">
<title>Implemented options</title>

<para>The <envar>CYGWIN</envar> environment variable is used to configure
many global settings for the Cygwin runtime system. It contains the options
listed below, separated by blank characters. Many options can be turned off
by prefixing with <literal>no</literal>.</para>

<itemizedlist mark="bullet">

<listitem>
<para><envar>(no)detect_bloda</envar> - If set, Cygwin will try to detect
foreign applications which try to inject threads into a Cygwin process,
or which redirect system sockets by providing an enforced so-called
<literal>Layered Service Provider</literal>.  This may or may not help to
detect <ulink url="http://cygwin.com/faq/faq.html#faq.using.bloda">
BLODAs</ulink>.  Don't use this option for day-to-day usage, it will slow
down every thread and socket creation!</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para><envar>(no)dosfilewarning</envar> - If set, Cygwin will warn the
first time a user uses an "MS-DOS" style path name rather than a POSIX-style
path name.  Defaults to set.</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para><envar>(no)export</envar> - If set, the final values of these
settings are re-exported to the environment as <envar>CYGWIN</envar> again.
Defaults to off.</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para>
<envar>error_start:Win32filepath</envar> - if set, runs 
<filename>Win32filepath</filename> when cygwin encounters a fatal error,
which is useful for debugging.  <filename>Win32filepath</filename> is
usually set to the path to <command>gdb</command> or
<command>dumper</command>, for example
<filename>C:\cygwin\bin\gdb.exe</filename>. 
There is no default set.
</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para><envar>(no)glob[:ignorecase]</envar> - if set, command line arguments
containing UNIX-style file wildcard characters (brackets, braces, question mark,
asterisk, escaped with \) are expanded into lists of files that match 
those wildcards.
This is applicable only to programs run from non-Cygwin programs such as a CMD prompt.
That means that this setting does not affect globbing operations for shells such as
bash, sh, tcsh, zsh, etc.
Default is set.</para>
<para>This option also accepts an optional <literal>[no]ignorecase</literal> modifer.
If supplied, wildcard matching is case insensitive.  The default is <literal>noignorecase</literal></para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para><envar>(no)pipe_byte</envar> - causes Cygwin to open pipes in byte mode rather than
message mode.</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para><envar>proc_retry:n</envar> - causes <function>fork()</function> and
<function>exec*()</function> to retry n times when a child process fails
due to certain windows-specific errors.  These errors usually occur when
processes are being started while a user is logging off.
</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para><envar>(no)reset_com</envar> - if set, serial ports are reset
to 9600-8-N-1 with no flow control when used. This is done at open
time and when handles are inherited.  Defaults to set.</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para><envar>winsymlinks:{lnk,native,nativestrict}</envar> - if set to just
<literal>winsymlinks</literal> or <literal>winsymlinks:lnk</literal>,
Cygwin creates symlinks as Windows shortcuts with a special header and
the R/O attribute set.</para>

<para>If set to <literal>winsymlinks:native</literal> or
<literal>winsymlinks:nativestrict</literal>, Cygwin creates symlinks as
native Windows symlinks on filesystems and OS versions supporting them.
If the OS is known not to support native symlinks (Windows XP, Windows
Server 2003), a warning message is produced once per session.</para>

<para>The difference between <literal>winsymlinks:native</literal> and
<literal>winsymlinks:nativestrict</literal> is this:  If the filesystem
supports native symlinks and Cygwin fails to create a native symlink for
some reason, it will fall back to creating Cygwin default symlinks
with <literal>winsymlinks:native</literal>, while with
<literal>winsymlinks:nativestrict</literal> the <literal>symlink(2)</literal>
system call will immediately fail.</para>

<para>For more information on symbolic links, see
<xref linkend="pathnames-symlinks"></xref>.</para>
</listitem>

</itemizedlist>

</sect2>

<sect2 id="cygwinenv-removed-options">
<title>Obsolete options</title>

<para>
Certain CYGWIN options available in past releases have been removed in
Cygwin 1.7 for one reason or another.  These obsolete options are listed
below.</para>

<itemizedlist mark="bullet">

<listitem>
<para><envar>(no)binmode</envar> - This option has been removed because
all file opens default to binary mode, unless the open mode has been specified
explicitly in the open(2) call.
</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para><envar>check_case</envar> - This option has been removed in favor of
real case sensitivity and the per-mount option "posix=[0|1]".  For more
information, read the documentation in <xref linkend="mount-table"></xref> and
<xref linkend="pathnames-casesensitive"></xref>.</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para><envar>codepage:[ansi|oem]</envar> - This option controlled
which character set is used for file and console operations.  Since Cygwin
is now doing all character conversion by itself, depending on the
application call to the <function>setlocale()</function> function, and in
turn by the setting of the environment variables <envar>$LANG</envar>,
<envar>$LC_ALL</envar>, or <envar>$LC_CTYPE</envar>, this setting
became superfluous.</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para><envar>(no)envcache</envar> - Originally, <envar>envcache</envar>
controlled caching of environment variable conversion between Win32 and
POSIX.  The default setting works fine, the option was just useless.</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para><envar>forkchunk:[intval]</envar> - This option allowed to influence
the <function>fork()</function> function in the way the memory of the
parent process gets copied to the child process.  This functionality was
only useful for Windows 95/98/Me.
</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para><envar>(no)ntea</envar> -  This option has been removed since it
only fakes security which is considered dangerous and useless.  It also
created an uncontrollably large file on FAT and was entirely useless
on FAT32.</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para><envar>(no)ntsec</envar> - This option has been removed in favor of
the per-mount option "acl"/"noacl".  For more information, read the
documentation in <xref linkend="mount-table"></xref>.</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para><envar>(no)server</envar> - Originally this option had to be
enabled on the client side to use features only available when running
<command>cygserver</command>.  This option has been removed because Cygwin now
always tries to contact cygserver if a function is called which requires
cygserver being available.  For more information, read the documentation
in <xref linkend="using-cygserver"></xref>.</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para><envar>(no)smbntsec</envar> - This option has been removed in favor of
the per-mount option "acl"/"noacl".  For more information, read the
documentation in <xref linkend="mount-table"></xref>.</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para><envar>(no)strip_title</envar> - Removed because setting the Window title
can be controlled by the application via Escape sequences.</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para><envar>(no)title</envar> - Removed because setting the Window title
can be controlled by the application via Escape sequences.</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para><envar>(no)transparent_exe</envar> - This option has been removed
because the behaviour it switched on is now the standard behaviour in
Cygwin.</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para><envar>(no)traverse</envar> - This option has been removed because
traverse checking is not quite correctly implemented by Microsoft and
it's behaviour has been getting worse with each new OS version.  This
complicates its usage so the option has been removed for now.</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para><envar>(no)tty</envar> - If set, Cygwin enabled extra support
(i.e., termios) for UNIX-like ttys in the Windows console. This option
has been removed because it can be easily replaced by using a terminal
like <command>mintty</command>, and it does not work well with some
Windows programs.</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
<para><envar>(no)upcaseenv</envar> - This option could be used to convert
all environment variables to uppercase.  This was the default behavior in
releases prior to Cygwin 1.7.  Since keeping the case of environment
variables intact is POSIXly correct, Cygwin now does not change the case
of environment variables, except for a restricted set to maintain minimal
backward compatibility.  The current list of always uppercased variables is:
</para>
<screen>
  ALLUSERSPROFILE
  COMMONPROGRAMFILES
  COMPUTERNAME
  COMSPEC
  HOME
  HOMEDRIVE
  HOMEPATH
  NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS
  OS
  PATH
  PATHEXT
  PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE
  PROCESSOR_IDENTIFIER
  PROCESSOR_LEVEL
  PROCESSOR_REVISION
  PROGRAMFILES
  SYSTEMDRIVE
  SYSTEMROOT
  TEMP
  TERM
  TMP
  TMPDIR
  WINDIR
</screen>
</listitem>

</itemizedlist>

</sect2>

</sect1>