delorie.com/archives/browse.cgi   search  
Mail Archives: cygwin/2010/03/29/11:19:52

X-Recipient: archive-cygwin AT delorie DOT com
X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_50,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE,SPF_HELO_PASS,T_RP_MATCHES_RCVD
X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2010 11:19:37 -0500 (CDT)
From: Tim McDaniel <tmcd AT panix DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: rxvt and mintty fail with SHELL=c:\bin\bash.exe
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.1003291106100.1996@panix1.panix.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-IsSubscribed: yes
Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
List-Id: <cygwin.cygwin.com>
List-Subscribe: <mailto:cygwin-subscribe AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Archive: <http://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin/>
List-Post: <mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Help: <mailto:cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com>, <http://sourceware.org/ml/#faqs>
Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com

I've used rxvt for many years, because I don't want to set up an X
server and I was able to do everything I want with it.  Since the last
update, if I clicked on my shortcut to rxvt, or ran it from cmd.exe,
it flashed open a window and then immediately closed it.  But I could
start "c:\bin\bash" with or without "-l" from cmd.exe.

I went to the mailing lists and saw the recent problem reports about
rxvt, "modified cygwin.bat for rxvt - window does not stay up in
1.7.2" (but I was already using a full path) and that rxvt does not
and will never understand Unicode.

So I decided to try mintty.  But IT also flashed up its window and
immediately closed it.

Bless the mintty developers who included the "-l, --log FILE" option.

     $ cat mintty.log
     exec: c:\bin\bash.exe: No such file or directory$

     c:\home\tmcdaniel>set | c:\bin\grep bash
     SHELL=c:\bin\bash.exe

SHELL is set in My Computer's system environment variables.  I don't
know why I set it in Windows syntax years ago.  I might guess that I
wanted to keep open the possibility of using %SHELL% in cmd.exe and
"$SHELL" in bash.

I changed SHELL to /bin/bash, and now both rxvt and mintty start up
fine.

I see that Cygwin is deprecating more strongly the use of
Windows-syntax filenames in Cygwin.  But Cygwin also deprecated a root
of c:\ and, frankly, I disagreed with that too.  This change broke a
system that had been doing what I wanted.  If Cygwin will generally
accept Window-style paths in shells and such, I think that it should
continue to accept them in SHELL too.

-- 
Tim McDaniel, tmcd AT panix DOT com

--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple

- Raw text -


  webmaster     delorie software   privacy  
  Copyright © 2019   by DJ Delorie     Updated Jul 2019