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Development Tasks / FAQ for Cygwin

The Cygwin environment is intended as a full-featured Linux-like environment running within Windows, with executable programs that are compiled to be compatible with Windows. Whereas MinGW focuses on providing a minimal environment for development tools, Cygwin provides an extensive environment with many software packages.

Answers to the following questions are provided in this documentation:

How do I open a Cygwin Terminal?

Cygwin may be useful as an alternative to the the Windows MinGW environment. However, it is currently not supported.

Cygwin, when installed, typically creates a desktop shortcut to create a Cygwin terminal. Running the program opens a terminal window that runs Bash and provides command-line access.

How do I navigate Windows folders in Cygwin?

The Cygwin terminal behaves like a typical command line interface. Because Cygwin is Linux-like, folders are separated with forward slash /. Cygwin uses a root level folder /cygdrive/C (rather than C:\). To access native Windows files, prefix /cygdrive/C (or other drive letter) before folder names and then navigate to subfolders.

How do I access Cygwin programs from the Windows Command Shell?

The Cygdrive shell automatically uses the Windows PATH as well as prefixes some Cygwin folders. Consequently, most Windows programs are available from the Cygwin command shell, including batch files. Use the which program to find an executable program from the PATH, for example:

$ which date

/usr/bin/date

Programs that have the same name in Cygwin and Windows will be found depending on which one is first in the PATH.