Is copying files from Windows to Cygwin harmful?

1. If I copy some files from windows to the /home folder of Cygwin, am I corrupting Cygwin file system?
2. How about if some of these file are executable and I execute them in Cygwin /home folder?
3. Should I change the access mode by chmod before executing the executable files?

1 Answer

You would not be corrupting Cygwin if you copied files to /home. But you might prefer to let Cygwin put you in /home/{yourusername} and then create symlinks to your Windows' Documents, Pictures, etc.

ln -s /cygdrive/C/Users/yourusername/Documents
ln -s /cygdrive/C/Users/yourusername/Pictures
#...etc...

I should point out that Cygwin is different to WSL, where there are (or have been) dire warnings against copying anything from the Windows environment into the Linux subsystem environment. Cywin is not WSL and does not suffer from this file copying restriction.