Windows – How to create a shortcut in the Windows 7 taskbar that starts mintty and cygwin

cygwin;minttytaskbarwindows 7

I would like to have a starter in the Windows 7 taskbar that starts Cygwin, then starts mintty and then ideally navigates to /cygdrive/c/Users/myName/

I guess this should be possible using some unholy combination of batch files and shell scripts. Could you help me there?

Best Answer

You can just create a mintty shortcut, with these settings:

Target: C:\cygwin\bin\mintty /bin/env CHERE_INVOKING=1 /bin/bash -l
Start in: C:\Users\yourName

No scripts required. Setting CHERE_INVOKING stops /etc/profile from changing directory to $HOME. (That variable comes from the 'chere' package.)

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Windows – Running cmd.exe from within Cygwin

/? is treated as a pattern by bash, where the question mark will fit a single character, so if you have any one-letter files or directories in your Cygwin root, the pattern will be replaced with those. echo /? will show you if that's what's happening. You can escape the question mark with a backslash: /\?. Or quote the whole argument: '/?'.

cygstart c:/windows/system32/cmd will start cmd.exe in its own window.

Windows – cygwin ssh shortcut on windows desktop

You need to create a shell script and then have a mintty shortcut that calls it. First, the script:

#!/bin/bash

eval `ssh-agent`
ssh-add
read -p "Username: "
username=$REPLY
read -p "Host: "
host=$REPLY
ssh $username@$host
eval `ssh-agent -k`

Save this as something like: ~/bin/CygwinMinttySsh.sh

Make sure the script is executable: chmod a+rx ~/bin/CygwinMinttySsh.sh

Then create a new shortcut to C:\cygwin\bin\mintty.exe, then right-click on it and select "properties" and change the target to:

C:\cygwin\bin\mintty.exe -e /bin/sh -l -c '$HOME/bin/CygwinMinttySsh.sh'

Best Answer

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