Adding packages to Cygwin
As discussed in
part I, the setup.exe file located at
the Cygwin homepage not only does the initial command shell install, but it can also be used to add packages or programs to your Cygwin setup.
Say for instance you heard somewhere about this great little command called wtf, which defines acronyms for you at the shell prompt. So you fire up Cygwin and type wtf, and get the "bash: wtf: command not found" in response. It's time to add the wtf package to your install.
Download setup.exe and launch. When you get to the "Select Packages screen," toggle the view mode to either the "Full" or "Not Installed" alphabetical list of packages. When you get to the "wtf" listing, click on the "Skip" item in the "New?" column to add it to the download. You might get the choice of a couple of versions of a program - like, say, 0.0.4-6 or 0.0.4-3. I usually go with the newest version just to be safe. The checkbox in the "Bin?" column will be filled in, and that's what you want. Don't worry about "Src?" (source code) which can be left unchecked, as shown. (Click to enlarge.)
Complete the setup and relaunch Cygwin. Now, if you type wtf wtf, you'll get:
gina@scully ~
$ wtf wtf
wtf: Who or What, depending on the context.
Usually implies a question mark.
The "TF" is really padding, to make this a three-letter acronym,
meaning something like "pray tell".
Also the name of a very useful Cygwin package
gina@scully ~
$
They're pretty funny, those Cygwin WTF package developers. Use wtf to look up acronyms like wtf afaik, or wtf ymmv.
Networking Utilities
This section covers VERY old hat for anyone experience with Unix. But as someone who grew up in Windows, I remember the first time I logged into a remote server at the command line. I thought it was magic. One of Unix's greatest strength are the powerful and secure networking utilities built into it. Using Cygwin, you can remotely login to another machine running an SSH (secure shell) server and control it, all from the comfort of your local command line. For instance, if your Mac at 192.168.2.10 has "Remote Login" enabled in the Sharing Preferences, from the Cygwin prompt, you can use ssh to remotely control it, like so:
gina@scully ~
$ ssh gina@192.168.2.10
Password:
Last login: Thu Jun 15 22:38:30 2006
Welcome to Darwin!
amelia:~ gina$
From there you can execute commands on your Mac Terminal as usual from Cygwin. Another useful networking utility is scp, which securely copies files from one machine to another, like so:
gina@scully ~
$ scp gina@192.168.2.10:~/todo.txt todo.txt
Password:
todo.txt 100% 28 0.0KB/s 00:00
gina@scully ~
$
That command grabbed the todo.txt in the home directory of the Mac (or any SSH server running at the 192.168.2.10 IP address) and copied it to my local machine.
You can do all sorts of Unix networking magic with Cygwin, like running a Cygwin-based SSH server on your PC, port forwarding and secure tunneling with ssh.
Script common tasks
Now that you know how to craft Cygwin command line tasks, there may be multi-command operations you want to perform over and over - or
automate. This is when you should create a script.
Say for instance, you like to email your phone your shopping list from 3 text files: todo.txt, grocerylist.com and giftideas.txt. Create a new text file called "listtophone" and enter the following into it:
# Put all the stuff you have to buy into a single text file, tobuy.txt
grep @shopping todo.txt > tobuy.txt
cat giftideas.txt grocerylist.txt >> tobuy.txt
# Send the list to your cell phone via email for reference at the store
email -t 5551212@teleflip.com -s 'stuff to buy today' < tobuy.txt
# Delete the temporary file
rm tobuy.txt
The commented lines (that start with a #) explain a little bit about what's going on. Basically, you're grepping out your @shopping context items in todo.txt and all the items in giftideas.txt and grocerylist.txt and dropping them into tobuy.txt. Then, you're emailing your phone tobuy.txt. When that's done, you clean up by deleting tobuy.txt. Make sure you replace the 55521212@teleflip.com your phone or PDA's email address.
Save your "listtophone" file, and make it an executable script. To do so, use the chmod (change permissions) command:
gina@scully ~
$ chmod 755 listtophone
From there on in, just before you head out to the store, run your script from the directory where it lives, like so:
gina@scully ~
$ ./listtophone
See also previously-posted article,
Mastering wget, for some neat scriptable wget recipes that work well at the Cygwin prompt.
Learn more about Unix and Cygwin
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