Cygwin X11R7.4 update support
I just burned down the Cygwin X11R7.4 update and I find the official mailing lists to be hostile and awkward. So I thought I'd ask here.
If you survived the update (or at least made progress on fixing it), what steps did you take to get everything working?
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This update breaks the bits of the X Window System into separate packages. For example, if you need fonts, you will need to install them when you run the Cygwin installer. There's no simple answer you'll need for, but outside of usable space, there's no reason not to get more than you need. I added anything that seemed even remotely useful.
If you've done anything with the startx
script, I'm sorry you have to redo this work. Note that this will bite people who followed the advice at the top of this script: "Site admins strongly recommend writing nicer versions." (Yes, I had to use source control, and yes, I shouldn't blindly update Cygwin, but who would have thought that the installation process would change dramatically from one release to another. And why can't the installation save a copy of me?)
For me, a shortcut to the Windows start menu worked better than starting startx
from the command line because the default configuration is much closer to what I have used in the past. Note that startxwin.bat
assumes you have Cygwin installed \cygwin
, which may or may not be correct. Make sure first if the shortcut flashes the console window and silently fails.
Update: I now decided that startxwin.sh
is the run script version I like the most. I start X with -multiwindow
and only run one xterm
. In contrast startxwin.bat
, it doesn't make any potentially erroneous assumptions about where Cygwin is installed, so it doesn't need to be edited every time it is updated.
Initially the number lock key was screwed down, but it seems to have been fixed when I made another update.
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At some point, the default for startx changed from rootless / multiwindow to the single window option that Cygwin used many years ago.
Ugh! I guess it was due to a world update to use X.org materials instead of old XFree86 / X11 or whatever. Whatever the reason, it's fearlessly annoying! I suppose in someone's point of view this is "right", and I might like it someday. I think I already like what I see when I research this: the manpages are updated and seem pretty clear.
I still want to run startx for now. I don't want to run a .bat script, I don't want to run a custom script.
startx starts X through the process described in the xinitrc package. Following this process, you can create an .xserverrc file in your home directory to control the running server process, including its command line arguments. (You can also specify startx on the command line, apparently.) The right thing seems to be to put the following in $ HOME / .xserverrc:
exec XWin -multiwindow -clipboard -silent-dup-error
You probably still want to create a .xinitrc to control what runs in your session. I don't like how a single xterm becomes a lengthy process that ends the X session on exit, but at the moment I can't remember what I am doing to fix this situation and have no examples to look at here.
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