Shells (Mingw / Msys) : DevKit Git bash, vim

• Shells versions
• Shell personnalisation
• VI / VIM / GVIM

Shells versions

Once you’d installed the basics, you’ve got 2 shells : one on /devkit and one on /git

It may cause some conflict (different version, different tools …). So, i choose to drop the Git shell from th ePATH environment variable (c:/dev/git/bin) but keep the path for git command (c:/dev/git/cmd) : you can run the both shell (the git one can have autocompletion on git command, plus a nice PS1), but the Devkit shell is the default one.

Shell personnalisation

On Windows you’ve got a standard home path, but it’s too easy to become a piece of trash with other win programs …

So I’d try in first to set up a new home directory for all bash shell : c:/dev/home, but in final there too many tools or gem who did or didn’t respect this, and I revert $HOME to windows $USERPROFILE. So, I’d just puts some modification on profile file from the both shell (c:/dev/devkit/etc/profile and c:/dev/git/etc/profile)

    HOME=$USERPROFILE
    HOME="$(cd "$HOME" ; pwd)"
    HISTFILE=$HOME/.bash_history

    

Chek also /etc/fstab for some personal mount.

VI / VIM / GVIM

VIM is useful with quick simple edit, but is not bundle with DevKit (only with Git). So go to the VIM web site, download and install it (as usual, in c:/dev/…). It put some .BAT file directly under c:/windows … but those aren’t accessible when you run your shell (only under DOS prompt). So, just add c:/dev/vim/vim73 to your PATH variable, and check it :

    sh -l -i
    vim