Msys2 is now a reality and i got a positive discussion with the team who normally stands for Msys ports
a first beta can be downloaded from my sourceforge server. Its still a lot like cygwin besides using Msys exports in the dll and old msys tools still work with it also, but should be updated if possible. The msys team might change the /cygdrive (called /sysdrive in Msys2) to fit the old msys but else it has precisely the same options cygwin has with some adjustments to accept the Msys structure. The biggest thing with the new package is that Msys2 supports unicode names
and so a lot of tools not normally buildable without hacking a lot of stuff out works.