DMARC-Filter: OpenDMARC Filter v1.4.2 delorie.com 5B8NuMiw3936729
DMARC-Filter: OpenDMARC Filter v1.4.2 sourceware.org 2FBFE4BA2E22
Message-ID: <6d49e5c6-86cd-4410-a985-3ff6d82260c9@dronecode.org.uk>
Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2025 23:52:41 +0000
MIME-Version: 1.0
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird
Subject: Re: Need help starting an application when X starts
To: Jim Reisert AD1C <jjreisert@alum.mit.edu>
References: <CAK-n8j4G80=FLcMJXYGd9P8xJJMAiHAi2HeKuazxPp2j0-KVQw@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Language: en-US
Cc: cygwin@cygwin.com
In-Reply-To: <CAK-n8j4G80=FLcMJXYGd9P8xJJMAiHAi2HeKuazxPp2j0-KVQw@mail.gmail.com>
Precedence: list
From: Jon Turney via Cygwin <cygwin@cygwin.com>
Reply-To: Jon Turney <jon.turney@dronecode.org.uk>
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; Format="flowed"
Errors-To: cygwin-bounces~archive-cygwin=delorie.com@cygwin.com
Sender: "Cygwin" <cygwin-bounces~archive-cygwin=delorie.com@cygwin.com>

On 08/12/2025 14:49, Jim Reisert AD1C via Cygwin wrote:
> I'm having trouble locating the correct file to create/modify that
> will automatically start an X application when the Cygwin X server
> starts.
> 
> Here is how I start the X server:
> 
>      D:\Cygwin\bin\run.exe --quote /usr/bin/bash.exe -l -c "cd; exec
> /usr/bin/startxwin"
> 
> ~/.xserverrc contains this:
> 
>      exec /usr/bin/XWin -notrayicon -noclipboard "$@"
> 
> I've tried putting the command in ~/.xsession, but it doesn't start:
> 
>      /usr/bin/xwinclip >& /dev/null &
> 

If you use the "User .xsession script" shortcut, that ends up running 
your ~/.xsession.

Note that the server will exit once that script does! (so end it with 
'sleep infinity' if you don't want that to happen)

> I've tried copying the default .xinitrc to ~/.xinitrc and adding the
> command at the end, but that doesn't work either.
> 
> What am I doing wrong?
'man startxwin' says that the applicable files in this case are
/etc/X11/xinit/startxwinrc and ~/.startxwinrc.

Not sure if there's a good way to add customizations into that. But a 
~/.startxwinrc which does:

custom-command-i-want &
exec /usr/bin/xwin-xdg-menu

should get you most of the way there...


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