How do I change the default startup directory in Cygwin?

Question

Whenever I start cygwin, I need to cd several levels down to the only directory that I care about when using cygwin.

How can I get cygwin to start in this particular directory by default...i.e., each time I start Cygwin it will be in that directory already?

I found some things that may be it, or close, but I don't understand them, and there's really no results when I search for these (n00b) terms. Any help would be great!

Answer 1

Just add

cd /path/to/directory/you/care/about

to the bottom of your ~/.bashrc file.

Answer 2

in the last line of your .bash_profile (or .profile), put cd your/dirctory/here

Answer 3

Define "start cygwin"? You can run cygwin servers when you power your machine up, but I'm assuming that's not what you mean.

If you mean, end up in a specific folder every time you open a shell prompt, you can put that in your $HOME/.bashrc

Edit your $HOME/.bashrc using a cygwin editor (one that uses UNIX line endings), add a line

cd /whatever/directory/you/want

If you're constantly going to this directory, you're probably better off making an alias as well.

In your $HOME/.bashrc put:

alias GT='cd /whatever/directory/you/want'

Call it whatever you want; I just used GT for "go there", and I uppercase because it makes it easy to separate from builtin commands, which are never capitalized.