Drive detection stuff

[Andreas Mohr]

Hi,

On Fri, Mar 04, 2005 at 01:57:55PM +0100, Holly Bostick wrote:
> Mike Hearn wrote:
> >On Fri, 2005-03-04 at 11:18 +0100, Alexandre Julliard wrote:
> >>Mike Hearn <mike at navi.cx> writes:
> >>
> >>>2) We don't add any device symlinks. Some programs need these
> >>>  eg d:: -> /dev/cdrom
> >>That should never be needed on a standard setup. If you know of a case
> >>where it's required that should be considered a bug.
> >
> >I thought some programs used them to determine free disk space 
> 
> Speaking of free disk space detection.... I have had it happen with at 
> least 2 different programs (I can document more fully, just not this 
> second) that if I have a 20 GB partition ("games", 6GB free) mounted in 
> my home directory (/home/holly/games, but /home itself has only a few 
> hundred MB free), and try to install an app to Y:\games\app_name, I get 
> a warning (or in one case a stop) that there is not enough drive space 
> to install the app because there is not enough space on Y:\ (i.e., in 
> /home), but there is, in reality, enough space in Y:\games (i.e., in the 
> mounted partition). Whether the program will allow me to install seems 
> to depend on whether it's old and thinks it knows everything, or not so 
> old, and is willing to let me override what it thinks it sees in terms 
> of drive space; if the program allows me to install anyway, the program 
> naturally installs fine, since there is enough space.
Free space detection is strictly being based on the properties of the
current "main" partition mapping, as it should be.
There really isn't any way for Wine to account for a "mysteriously much
bigger" "special" directory inside the current drive that Wine sees.

It really cannot be solved by anything else other than the end user,
by creating a new drive mapping for the specially spacey sub directory.

Again, drive mapping focuses on the space properties of the partition
containing the root directory of the mapping, since this very drive letter
is the only reference point of windows programs.
It wouldn't even make sense to let Wine *manually* (i.e. very wasteful
operation!) figure out the combined disk space of the sub directories
beyond a drive mapping and advertise the combined space to Windows programs,
since then you give a free space of 60GB for /home/holly, whereas the program
will die a HORRIBLE death if it then boldly goes on with installing a
50GB game in /home/holly/install_dir...

If you have further mount points below another drive, then the user DOES
need to advertise this as another drive letter mapping to let Windows
programs know about it properly without any opportunities for failure.

Andreas Mohr