rxvt, GNU screen and bash

This is my OLD blog. I've copied this post over to my NEW blog at:

http://www.saltycrane.com/blog/2007/07/rxvt-gnu-screen-and-bash/

You should be redirected in 2 seconds.

rxvt is a better alternative to the default Cygwin cmd.exe setup. GNU screen is a full-screen window manager that, among other things, allows you to quickly switch between shell sessions. I had some trouble figuring out how to use them together along with bash, so here are my notes on how I did it.

 

In your Cygwin Windows shortcut put:

Target: C:\cygwin\bin\rxvt.exe -e bash --login -i

Start in: c:\cygwin\bin

At the end of your ~/.bash_profile, put the following line:

screen bash

Also, in your ~/.screenrc file (if you have one), make sure your shell command does not have a dash "-" in front. The dash in front will make screen treat the shell as a login shell, executing your "screen" command in your .bash_profile recursively. (see this thread on the zsh mailing list).

 

As a side note, I'm also trying out rsync. After only a small amout of use, I tend to agree with others that it rocks.