XFree86-start-menu-icons path problem

[Brian E. Gallew]

Dr.D.J.Picton wrote:
> A similar change to the system path enabled the start menu icons to work.
> But is it a recommended practice to include Cygwin directories in the standard
> system path?  (It makes it easier to launch Cygwin applications from a 
> Windows environment, but I'm worried about potential side effects).  In my
> view it would be preferable for the path setting to be handled by the 
> shortcut.

That's an interesting question.  I habitually set my path to include all 
the stuff I plan on running (which is kind of the point of PATH).  OTOH, 
privileged accounts generally run with a restricted PATH to reduce the 
chance of running a trojan.  As time passes, I'm becoming more and more 
convinced that the right answer here is to either patch run.exe to let 
me set the PATH on the command line (or better yet, extend it), or 
provide a wrapper program that sets the PATH and so forth before 
invoking run.exe.  I clearly need to modify my script already to fix a 
few more icon issues, so that would be the time to make any other changes.

The other side of the question is: what PATH do I use?  If I explicitly 
set the PATH I run the risk of overriding someone's preferences on which 
  binaries to run, and where to run them from.  Further, I risk missing 
anything installed in a non-standard location.  The way the script runs 
now, it checks that they programs are available in the PATH that exists 
when the script is run (from the setup.exe envionment or the user 
environment).