Seething over MSYS shell - is it replaceable?

Question

I need a serviceable shell for MSYS. This is my current dilemma:

The default rxvt.exe has a scroll bar and copy and paste, but doesn\'t send control characters or arro

Answer 1

Do yourself a favour and use proper Cygwin instead of the unmaintained fork of an old Cygwin version that is msys.

Answer 2

Use PowerShell instead of the old cmd. Then run sh like this

C:\msys64\usr\bin\sh.exe --login -i

I tested on Winows 8.1 with MSYS2 and Haskell Platform 2014.2.0.0. With GHCi there are no problems. All arrow keys and other keys work as expected.

Also, I could not get the Console2 to work on Windows8 properly as suggested in the other answers.

Answer 3

I've not used the msys stuff, but it should be enough to use something other than rxvt and run sh.exe in it. Now, if you're using control characters, you may need to be sure whatever you use supports what you need (i.e. vt100 emulation).

One route might be to use cygwin. I typically run cygwin with a rootless X server, and run xterm on it.. So far it has been very good and I haven't had many issues. I know arrow keys and such work just fine under it.

Answer 4

Check http://code.google.com/p/mintty/. How about that? I find it absolutely useful. Or puttycyg (an older attempt)?

Answer 5

From the msys shell:

mingw-get install mintty
mintty

Answer 6

You are confusing "shell" and "terminal emulator". sh.exe is the former; rxvt is the latter. (mind you, under Windows you can do without a terminal emulator because Windows creates one (a "console window") for any console program (such as sh.exe) if it's not already running inside one)