How to create a shortcut in the Windows 7 taskbar that starts mintty and cygwin?

Question

I would like to have a starter in the Windows 7 taskbar that starts Cygwin, then starts mintty and then ideally navigates to /cygdrive/c/Users/myName/

I guess this should be possible using some unholy combination of batch files and shell scripts. Could you help me there?

Answer 1

You can just create a mintty shortcut, with these settings:

Target: C:\cygwin\bin\mintty /bin/env CHERE_INVOKING=1 /bin/bash -l
Start in: C:\Users\yourName

No scripts required. Setting CHERE_INVOKING stops /etc/profile from changing directory to $HOME. (That variable comes from the 'chere' package.)

Answer 2

Humm, I do not know what starting Cygwin is.

According to Cygwin FAQ (http://cygwin.com/faq/faq-nochunks.html#faq.setup.home), if you have %HOME% properly setup in Windows (IIRC, in W7 it defaults to \users\%USER_NAME%, UNIX $HOME is set to the same directory. And most shells start with cwd $HOME.