title: Using mingw/msys just for its posix tools: mount point question
body: <p>I write cross-platform software, so I like my Windows environment to be Un*x-like (I'm an old Unix/IRIX/Linux geek).  I just care about shells and tools, not so much about compilers or the build environment (I have a real industrial-strength build system that doesn't depend on mingw or cygwin).  I just want a shell window on my Windows box that works like a POSIX system.</p>
  
  <p>I'd like to move away from cygwin and its CRLF weirdness and dll-dependencies and update troubles, and maybe replace it with mingw/msys.  I've started to do this, but am stumped on one thing.  I really really need mingw paths to map to the same Windows paths.  So / must be c:/ and /windows -> c:/windows and so on.  Mingw's default mount setup ends up like a chroot, with mingw "/" mapping to c:/mingw or something like that.  You have to use drive prefixes like /c/windows to get to /Windows.  I'm happy to tweak my $PATH and whatever else I need to do to make this work.  Does anyone have any hints?</p>