Is it possible to use the fish shell with cygwin? I wasn't able to compile the source in cygwin, and I didn't find any precompiled packages. Is there a good reason for not having fish in cygwin?
3 Answers
fish shell 2.1.0 is now officially supported in Cygwin, it's possible to install it using the default installer.
Here's how I managed to compile fish in Cygwin.
Step 1: Check that all dependencies are installed
First, make sure we have the following cygwin packages:
libncurses-devel
libiconv
autoconf
(not a really a dependency of fish, but we need it for a later step)
Step 2: Download and extract the latest source
Next, download the latest source from http://fishshell.com (I used fish-1.23.1.tar.gz). Extract the source to your directory of choice and cd to it:
$ tar zxvf fish-1.23.1.tar.gz -C /usr/local/src/
$ cd /usr/local/src/fish-1.23.1/
Step 3: Edit configure.ac
to remove checks for iconv
Now for some reason, ./configure
cannot detect libiconv
properly. To get around the problem we remove the check for it (we'll specify the lib manually later). To do so, we edit configure.ac
and remove checks for iconv_open
. Searching for iconv_open
reveals 3 occurences; we comment them all out. So, from:
AC_SEARCH_LIBS( iconv_open, iconv, ....)
We change to:
#AC_SEARCH_LIBS( iconv_open, iconv, ....)
Step 4: Rebuild and run ./configure
Next, we rebuild the ./configure
script by running autoconf
then run the configure script:
$ autoconf && ./configure
Step 5: Edit Makefile
to include correct path to curses.h
Another problem I faced was with curses.h
-- gcc couldn't find it. A quick search revealed that it's in /usr/include/ncurses
.
The Makefile
has a hardcoded include path for it in CFLAGS
, but it points to /usr/local/include/ncurses
instead.
So, we edit Makefile
and change:
CFLAGS = -I/usr/local/include/ncurses -std=c99 ....
to
CFLAGS = -I/usr/include/ncurses -std=c99 ...
Step 6: Export LDFLAGS
to link in libiconv
, and we're ready to compile/install.
Finally, we export the necessary LDFLAGS
to link in iconv
, then compile and install!
$ export LDFLAGS="-liconv"
$ make && make install
Enjoy fish
$ fish
Welcome to fish, the friendly interactive shell
Type help for instructions on how to use fish
me@home /u/l/s/fish-1.23.1>
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+1 I can confirm the steps above should work. I also added
#define HAVE_NCURSES_H 1
in the generated header fileconfig.h
(for the same reasons stated above)– AmroAug 26, 2011 at 21:35 -
I've installed libiconv and set LDFLAGS, but I still get an error: set_color.c:16:20: curses.h: No such file or directory set_color.c: In function
translate_color': set_color.c:116: warning: implicit declaration of function
strcasecmp' set_color.c: In functionmain': set_color.c:333: error:
ERR' undeclared (first use in this function)– muriloqAug 29, 2011 at 22:12 -
I saw that error initially too. Have you installed
libncurses-devel
and changed the changed the-I
path in the `Makefile (step 5)? Aug 30, 2011 at 0:21 -
Yes, I even reinstalled libncurses-devel again, just to be sure. Perhaps there's another dependency that was already present in your system? Looking for the error message I've found the following bug report: sourceforge.net/tracker/…– muriloqSep 2, 2011 at 12:43
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@muriloq Sounds like
curses.h
is not being included (ERR
is defined there). Can you have a peek at/usr/include/ncurses/
and see if it's there? Sep 2, 2011 at 13:52
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2Links to external resources are encouraged, but please add context around the link so your fellow users will have some idea what it is and why it’s there. Always quote the most relevant part of an important link, in case the target site is unreachable or goes permanently offline.– AshildrOct 14, 2013 at 16:12