Cygwin Setup¶
A decent Cygwin setup with rxvt and bash.
Abstract¶
Cygwin is an environment which provides common unix/linux functionality (libraries, tools, compile, etc., almost everything) on a windows host system. It is a must have for windows power users. This page describes the setup I use for Cygwin on a laptop running Windoze XP Professional. Several modifications to the default configuration along with a few custom scripts are provided for download and use. Pointers to additional must have tools for power users, especially such who usually use Linux or similar, are listed at the end of the article.
A rxvt in native Windoze!Installation & Configuration¶
Download & Installation¶
Cygwin can be downloaded from cygwin.com. You only need setup.exe to bootstrap. It will let you choose a mirror to download the software and installation and scratch directories. Cygwin is made of various packages containing individual programs or collections of programs. There are essential packages such as bash, textutils, emacs or rxvt and less often used ones in different categories. The default selection of packages is probably good to start with. The installation program (setup.exe) can be used to install, update or uninstall individual packages at any time. See the excellent page at physionet.org (or alternatively similar pages at washington.edu or at ubc.ca) for details and screenshots of this process.
The $HOME directory¶
A Cygwin session has its own root file system (e.g. Cygwin’s / = C:Program Filescygwin). DOS drives can be accessed through e.g. /cygdrive/c. It is also possible to mount DOS paths into the cygwin tree. See the Cygwin manual for details.
By default the home directory (/home/username) is configured to be in C:Program Filescygwinhomeusername (or C:cygwinhome…). It is probably a good idea to change that to your profile path (C:Dokuments and SettingsusernameMy Documents) or a subdirectory within it.
This can be achieved by linking or mounting the chosen directory to /home/username.
cd /home mv username username.old ln -s "/cygdrive/c/Documents and Settings/username/My Documents" /home/username.
or:
cd /home mv username username.old mount "c:/Documents and Settings/username/My Documents" /home/username
Refer to the Cygwin documentation and FAQ on mounting of directories. The mounts should be persistent by default. Depending on the configuration this step has to be done with administrator privileges.
The rxvt Terminal¶
Cygwin’s setup.exe, by default, installs a shortcut named Cygwin Bash Shell which opens a terminal window using the windows cmd.exe. But a far better terminal application is available in Cygwin. The package rxvt installs a decent terminal programme running as a native windows application (no X-Server needed!).
The necessary configuration for rxvt is described below.
The following string can be used in a shortcut to start a rxvt terminal window with a bash login shell.
C:ProgrammeCygwinbinrxvt.exe -e /bin/bash --login
Or a batch file containing appropriate commands opens three terminal windos. The geometry flag is used to set the (initial) size and position of the windows.
@echo off start C:ProgrammeCygwinbinrxvt.exe -geometry 100x41+0+0 -e /bin/bash --login start C:ProgrammeCygwinbinrxvt.exe -geometry 100x25+0+0 -e /bin/bash --login start C:ProgrammeCygwinbinrxvt.exe -geometry 100x15+0-25 -e /bin/bash --login
Although rxvt is a native windows application it respects the ~/.Xressources file. The following excerpt from that file is used to set a useable font and a few other settings for rxvt windows.
rxvt.font: Courier New-18 rxvt.boldFont: Courier New-18 !rxvt.font: Lucida Console-18 !rxvt.boldFont: Lucida Console-18 !rxvt.font: fixedsys !rxvt.boldFont: fixedsys rxvt.scrollBar: True rxvt.visualBell: True rxvt.loginShell: True rxvt.background: Black rxvt.foreground: White rxvt.saveLines: 99999 rxvt.cursorColor: Green rxvt.scrollBar_right: True
To enable special characters (äöüéà etc.) and certain other settings, the following ~/.inputrc file is used.
# Be 8 bit clean. -> Umlaute, see readline(3) set input-meta on set output-meta on set convert-meta off # command line scrolling set horizontal-scroll-mode on "C-v": paste-from-clipboard "e[3~": delete-char # this is actually equivalent to "C-?": delete-char "e[7~":beginning-of-line "e[8~":end-of-line
Printing¶
The following command works with a postscript printer. See also the PRINTER variable in .bashrc. Adjust the host and printer names.
lpr -d '\hostnameprintername' file.ps
It is possible to create a virtual Postscript printer in Windows using Ghostscript. I didn’t test this but it looks promising. I would probably use the Adobe Generic PS driver.
GCC and Makefiles¶
In Cygwin gcc -o hello_world hellow_world.c produces the binary hello_world.exe while the same command in Linux produces the binary file hello_world. This is a problem when the same Makefile sould work in Cygwin and Linux. I avoid it as follows (credits go to das U-Boot project).
HOSTOS := $(shell uname -s | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | sed -e 's/(cygwin).*/cygwin/')
ifeq ($(HOSTOS),cygwin)
CC=gcc
SFX=.exe
else
CC=gcc
SFX=
endif
all: hello_world.$(SFX)
hello_world$(SFX): hello_world.c
$(CC) hello_world.c -o hello_world$(SFX)
Bash Configuration¶
The ~/.bash_profile file only contains one command to load the ~/.bashrc file.
source ~/.bashrc
The ~/.bashrc file is parsed and executed by bash on startup. The LANG and LC_ALL variables should be adjusted to your locale or commented out to select the default (C, English).
# Set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d ~/bin ] ; then
PATH="~/bin:${PATH}"
fi
alias less='less -r'
alias rm='rm -i'
alias ll='ls -l --color=auto'
alias la='ls -a --color=auto'
alias lla='ls -la --color=auto'
alias l='ls -F --color=auto'
alias ls='ls --color=auto'
alias mc='mc -a'
# language, i18n..
export LANG=de_CH
export LC_ALL=de_CH
case $TERM in
xterm)
PS1=
PS2="> "
PS4="+"
PROMPT_COMMAND='
pcpwd=${PWD/$HOME/~}
[[ "${#pcpwd}" -gt 25 ]] && pcpwd="..${pcpwd: -25}"
echo -ne "�33]0;${USER}@${HOSTNAME} ${PWD/$HOME/~}�07"
green="�33[32m"; orange="�33[33m"; cyan="�33[36m"; off="�33[m";
PS1="$greenu$orange@$greenh $cyan${pcpwd}$orange $ $off"
'
;;
dumb)
PS1="u@h w $ "
PS2="> "
PS4="+"
PROMPT_COMMAND=
;;
esac
export RSYNC_RSH="ssh -x"
export CFLAGS="-march=i686 -O2"
export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/lib"
export OUTPUT_CHARSET=latin1
# adjust the host and printer names
export PRINTER='\hostnameprintername'
umask 0027
Various¶
In order to make cursor keys work in vim use this command (thanks to Robin Bowes). It furthermore enables nice colours in vim and possibly other features.
cp /usr/share/vim/vim71/vimrc_example.vim ~/.vimrc
Conclusions¶
Cygwin is the alternative for a native Linux system to me. Since I am bound to several windows programmes, installing Linux is not an option. Using Cygwin brings most of the essential Linux funtionality (bash, texttools, GCC, The Holy GNU Emacs, gawk, etc.) to the windows desktop. For me, that is the solution. For example I develop data processing programmes on the windows laptop using The One True Editor and GCC under Cygwin. The calculation itself can then be carried out on faster and bigger Linux systems. The only step necessary to make that happen, is compiling and linking against the Linux host.
Issues¶
There are certain issues which I have not been able to resolve so far. Any comment or help on that is highly appreciated.
- rxvt seems to use a lot of memory after some time (even worse than Firefox). I’m currently testing puttycyg which might be an alternative.
- A decent font containing all necessary characters usually available on Linux systems is missing. Courier and Lucida Console for example do not have the line drawing characters used by programmes like Midnight Commander or ncurses applications in general. and I don’t know how to have ncurses use other characters instead. Anyone?
- Useable interoperability between GNU Emacs for Windows and Cygwin has not been achieved yet. So far the version provided through Cygwin is in use. A separate X Windows server programme is necessary to open Emacs windows. This works rather well with the commercially available X-Win 32. Tests with XFree86 (from Cygwin) and X.org (standalone win32 version) have not been satisfying. Xming works rather well. A minor issue is thet it does not recognise changes in screen resolution (e.g. after (un)docking the laptop). I have the following startx.bat:
@ECHO OFF START C:ProgrammeXmingXming.exe -xkbvariant ch -xkbmodel pc105 -clipboard -multiwindow C:ProgrammeXmingsetxkbmap.exe -display :0 ch
Update: This works as well (in a shortcut leave out the start “foo” part):
start "foo" C:Program filesXmingXming.exe :0 -xkblayout ch -clipboard -multiwindow
Hacks for the Power User¶
- I made good experiences with unison to synchronise files between the development (i.e. the Windoze laptop) and the productive systems (the Linux cluster in the lab).
- I use VirtuaWin by Johan Piculell (many thanks!) with the Win32WM extension by Matti Jagula (thanks!) to enable some Linux style window manager features in windoze.
- A must-have is launchy by Josh Karlin.
Diagnostics (draft)¶
- cygcheck -s -v -r