Cygwin shell setup and bash-style tweaks

We have already seen how Cygwin can bring some great quality-of-life improvements as an alternative to using the native Windows terminal. Cygwin closely emulates a Unix shell, but there are still some differences.

The Home directory for Cygwin shell is probably not where you might think it should be. It is actually located within the Cygwin install directory (i.e. C:\Program Files\cygwin\home\User):

cd ~
pwd
/home/User

Since this isn't technically your Windows user's home directory, it will be empty, aside from config files that are used to emulate the Unix environment. As an example, you would navigate to C:\Users\User\My Documents like below (note how spaces need to be escaped by using backslashes):

cd /cygdrive/c/Users/User/My\ Documents/

Packages and programs are also not installed via command line. Instead, as explained in an earlier post, you would need to re-run the Cygwin setup.exe, which doesn't actually reinstall Cygwin from scratch, but just rebuilds it from existing packages, as well as any new ones you add during this subsequent install.

Aliases are a neat way to improve your workflow, and setting some up in Cygwin is really no different than Unix. Let's add some aliases (all config files are in the Cygwin home directory):

vi ~/.bashrc

I usually uncomment the ll, ls, la aliases, and add a few, like this function to use Notepad++ as a GUI text editor instead of using Vim in the terminal. Vim isn't great in Cygwin (feels more buggy than its Unix counterparts), so a solid GUI alternative before resorting to vanilla Notepad, is the nicer Notepad++. Anyways, you can also set up simple navigational aliases if symbolic links aren't your thing:

alias pro='cd /cygdrive/d/Projects'

You can also turn off the annoying bell beep sound the shell makes when you enter something incorrect, or try to autocomplete something that doesn't exist. In your ~/.inputrc file, uncomment or add:

set bell-style none

Reload the shell, no need to close and reopen to pull in the changes:

// These two commands are identical:
source ~/.bashrc
. ~/.bashrc

And now you can enjoy your newly added shortcuts!

Setting up Git, SVN, curl and SSH on Windows using Cygwin terminal

I have previously mentioned that on my home computer, which is a Windows-running machine, I use Cygwin shell with a Console2 terminal. I have gotten used to Unix commands and infrastructure as I use them at work, and the Windows CLI just felt... well, flat in comparison.

Cygwin and Console2 are a nice remedy to implement a familiar interface for Windows. Let's start with Cygwin.

In their own words, Cygwin is "a large collection of GNU and Open Source tools which provide functionality similar to a Linux distribution on Windows". And frankly, this is the least finicky way I've been able to use Git on Windows. A lot of other GUI-based Git interfaces are pretty bad, and it's always better practices to learn and know the command line commands. So, speaking of, once you downloaded Cygwin, you choose your install directory, as well as a downloaded packages directory - it is here that "modules" such as Git gets installed into Cygwin. Get to know and love the Packages interface in Cygwin, chances are that if you are missing a module and need to install it later, you will be running Cygwin's installation program again (which now skips right to the packages window) to add what you need.

For a first-time install, I usually kick off my setup with a few choice packages such as:

• vim (ironically for a UNIX emulator, this is actually not enabled by default)
• OpenSSH
• AutoSSH
• PHP interpreter
• curl
• PHP-curl
• Git (be sure to select the ca-certificates and libsasl2 packages as well - oddly they are not chosen as dependencies (unless you install the curl package as above). See here for more info, else you'll be running into "cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory" HTTPS git errors!)
• Git/SVN
• lib-mcrypt

These make it convenient to run commands straight from the Cygwin shell, for example if I need to run a quick cURL call or something. The SSH client is pure command line, so no need to fiddle around with crappy Windows GUI clients or yet another terminal emulator like PuTTY.

After selecting your desired Cygwin packages, you can complete the installation, noting the prompt to install dependencies for your selected packages. I usually go back and disable a few at this point, because - for example - blanket enabling the entire PHP5 package would then enable other packages like PHP5-apache2, which then have their own dependencies like the large Apache2 package which I personally won't need at all.

After installing, you can open your Cygwin shell, and see something like this message on the first load:

Copying skeleton files.
These files are for the users to personalise their cygwin experience.

They will never be overwritten nor automatically updated.

'./.bashrc' -> '/home/User//.bashrc'
'./.bash_profile' -> '/home/User//.bash_profile'
'./.inputrc' -> '/home/User//.inputrc'
'./.profile' -> '/home/User//.profile'

User@location ~
$ |

Right now, you're probably thinking that it's nice to have a UNIX shell, but the default Windows terminal that still wraps it is not very nice. I am of the same opinion. In the next post we will spruce things up a bit with Console2, entirely replacing the vanilla cmd terminal that the Cygwin shell still defaults to, and in a future post go over some Cygwin-specific tips.

Bash shell: Incremental history searching

From using Git, Linux/Ubuntu apt-repositories, or general Bash folder navigation, you may have noticed that pushing the tab button halfway through typing an item/folder name will autocomplete it if it exists. Similarly, we can build an autocomplete feature for user commands that have been entered in the past! They are obviously stored in history somewhere, because you can already chronologically "scroll" through every single command you've issued, or just see it all by entering history. It would be nice to have a quick way to access something specific, complex or lengthy, especially if you already know how it starts.

All you need to do to find a previous command, is to start entering the first few letters of it, then you can navigate all commands you previously issued that started with your entered phrase, by using the up/down arrows! Here's how you set it up:

In terminal, open or create:

gedit  ~/.inputrc

Copy/paste the following there, and save (you may also have to close and reopen a terminal, or reload this way):

"\e[A": history-search-backward
"\e[B": history-search-forward
"\e[C": forward-char
"\e[D": backward-char

And done! Now, for example, if I am now looking for the command...

sudo apt-get update

...all I need to do is enter the first few letters, something like...

sud

...and scrolling up/down through my now-selective bash history will allow me to easily locate the command in its entirety for use again!

Adapted from: Ubuntu User Community