Skip to Content
bash Cookbook
book

bash Cookbook

by Carl Albing, JP Vossen, Cameron Newham
May 2007
Beginner
628 pages
15h 46m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from bash Cookbook

Getting bash for Windows

Problem

You want to get bash for your Windows system, or you want to make sure you have the latest version.

Solution

Use Cygwin.

Download http://www.cygwin.com/setup.exe and run it. Follow the prompts and choose the packages to install, including bash, which is located in the shells category and is selected by default. As of early 2007, bash-3.1-6 and 3.2.9-11 are available.

Once Cygwin is installed, you will have to configure it. See the User Guide at http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net.

Discussion

From the Cygwin site:

What Is Cygwin

Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. It consists of two parts:

  • A DLL (cygwin1.dll), which acts as a Linux API emulation layer providing substantial Linux API functionality.

  • A collection of tools, which provide Linux look and feel.

    The Cygwin DLL works with all non-beta, non “release candidate,” x86 32-bit versions of Windows since Windows 95, with the exception of Windows CE.

    What Isn’t Cygwin

  • Cygwin is not a way to run native Linux apps on Windows. You have to rebuild your application from source if you want to get it running on Windows.

  • Cygwin is not a way to magically make native Windows apps aware of Unix functionality (e.g., signals, ptys). Again, you need to build your apps from source if you want to take advantage of Cygwin functionality.

Cygwin is a true Unix-like environment running on top of Windows. It is an excellent tool, but sometimes it might be overkill. For Windows native binaries of the GNU Text Utils (not including ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

bash Cookbook, 2nd Edition

bash Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Carl Albing, JP Vossen
Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook - Third Edition

Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook - Third Edition

Clif Flynt, Sarath Lakshman, Shantanu Tushar

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596526784Errata Page