Bash – Why is Cygwin not sourcing the .bashrc

bashcygwin;

I'm switching to Cygwin from the bash shell that ships with Git for Windows, and for some strange reason the .bashrc file is not being sourced when I open a new Terminal. I have to

source .bashrc

manually just to get my normal settings. echo $0 $- returns -bash himBH

What could be the problem?

Best Answer

The minus at the start of $0 means that bash is being started as a login shell.

In this case, bash reads initialization commands from .bash_profile, not .bashrc.

The simplest fix is to create ~/.bash_profile if it doesn't already exist, and put

if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
    source ~/.bashrc
fi

at the top.

Related Solutions

An equivalent to OS X’s “open” in Cygwin

$ cygstart theFile.ext

This will open theFile.ext with the default app you have set for .ext files.

I’m not getting syntax coloring in vim (using Cygwin)

You have to set vim in the non compatible mode, so it doesn't behave like vi. You should switch syntax on and switch on filetype detection and plugin detection. Here is a minimal .vimrc you can try:

set nocp
syntax on
filetype plugin indent on

This will make vim behave somewhat nicer and give syntax coloring. But there are a lot more things you could change.

You should install something like pathogen or vundle, so you can easily install new syntax files and other scripts.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

An equivalent to OS X’s “open” in Cygwin

I’m not getting syntax coloring in vim (using Cygwin)

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