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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2007 22:33:28 -0800
From: Brian Dessent <brian AT dessent DOT net>
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To: Cygwin Users List <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: Re: How do I launch an rxvt-unicode shell?
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Grok Mogger wrote:

> I recently installed rxvt-unicode.  That much was easy.  Could
> someone please tell me how to launch a shell?

First of all, realize that the rxvt-unicode package is X11 only.  So you
need to run the X server first before launching urxvt.  And also,
despite its name, it does not support unicode, since Cygwin itself does
not really support unicode.  The rationale for all of this is explained
in the release announcements, e.g.
<http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-announce/2006-05/msg00004.html>

Now, if you don't want X11 then you can use the plain old 'rxvt'
package.  This one is dual-flavor: it uses windows native graphics (GDI)
if no X server is running, or it does X11 if DISPLAY is set.  This can
be adventageous if you don't want the bloat of X just for some consoles.

In general when launching any rxvt, you normally need to specify
something with -e to execute.  If you don't, you get just plain bash,
not even "bash --login", so your profile won't be read.  Most people
want "bash --login --interactive" so you should specify that.

There are zillions of other options you can give to rxvt, just read the
manpage.  You can also use ~/.Xdefaults to make these settings so that
you don't have to specify them on the command line every time.  On the
other hand, if you create a Windows shortcut to rxvt you can just stick
them there and not worry about it.

An example of the kind of thing I personally use is:

rxvt -geometry 130x60 -bg black -fg gray -cr white -fn "Lucida
Console-11" -sr -sl 5000 -j -cr white -tn rxvt -e bash -li

You might have to play with the various -tn settings.  Good choices
would be rxvt-cygwin (for when using X11 flavor) and rxvt-cygwin-native
(for when using W11/GDI flavor.)

> And just out of curiosity, what's the "best" shell option in
> cygwin if I want my Linux shell on Windows?

You seem to be confusing the concepts of a terminal and a shell.  A
terminal or console is the thing that displays characters, such as
xterm, rxvt, etc.  A shell is the program that interprets commands
interactively, e.g. bash, zsh, ksh, etc.  These are two totally
unrelated things -- you can run shell scripts non-interactively with no
terminal, and you can directly invoke binaries and view their output on
a terminal without a shell.

Cygwin ships with bash as the default shell, same as Linux, so there's
nothing different there.  The choices for terminal on Cygwin are
approximately:

- native Windows console
- rxvt, GDI
- rxvt, X11
- rxvtu, X11
- xterm, X11 (or any other X11 terminal that you compile yourself,
really)
- third party native, e.g. <http://sourceforge.net/projects/console> or
putty.  With putty there is also cygputty which is kind of a go-between
that makes putty aware of Cygwin and eliminates some of the problems you
have when using a native (non-Cygwin) program attached to a Cygwin tty.

Personally, I use rxvt GDI.

Brian

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