Introduction

This file is intended to be checked out into your HOME directory. Typically that is not empty so a simple git clone will not work. The following sequence is best way forward:

1. git init
2. git remote add origin REPO
3. git fetch; git checkout master
4. git submodule update --init --recursive

Cygwin 'git' may complain about some of the submodules so add ignore = all to .gitmodules as needed.

Integrations

Dropbox and environment-specific hooks (eg. Windows/Cygwin) can be helpful. Suggest using mklink on certain shared paths helps to ensure maximum compatability.

Tie Windows into Cygwin

While within Cygwin /home is intuitive, but feeding a path element to CMD.exe (without calling cygpath [-w|m] which always fully qualifies) needs a symlink to avoid silly errors.

#file: /etc/fstab

none    /tmp    usertemp binary,posix=0 0 0
C:/Users /home  none    binary          0 0

let Windows tools understand /cygdrive/ via CMD.exe

mklink /D home C:\Users

mkdir C:\cygdrive; cd C:\cygdrive
mklink /D c C:\

Tie in Window to WSL

ln -s /mnt/c/Users/$USER .USERPROFILE
ln -s .USERPROFILE/Dropbox

HOMEDIR sym-links

Git-Bash (MINGW) doesn't support symlinks at all!

While it's tempting to not set the CYGWIN= environment variable, and thereby leverage the new WSL-compatible reparse-points, Win10+ doesn't properly render or follow them. This is particularly annoying with Windows/DOS-native binaries (eg. AWS CLI, Python|Ruby|Go|Puppet runtimes) or Explorer. My environment overrides the ln command with a function of the same name to transparently invoke mklink when in Cygwin. reference

# file:.bashrc_os.cygwin|msys
CYGWIN|MSYS='winsymlinks:nativestrict'

mklink /D home [C:]\Users

mklink /D .WPHOME Dropbox/Work_Projects/XXX
mklink .gitidentity .WPHOME/.gitidentity
mklink /D .aws .WPHOME/.aws
mklink /D .ssh .WPHOME/.ssh
mkdir -p "$LOCALAPPDATA/workspace"
mklink /D workspace AppData/Local/workspace"	# WSL: .USERPROFILE/...

ln -st . .WPHOME/.*.local

(Deprecated) It used to be that symlinks required advanced Windows rights. Thankfully, M$ finally got a clue. Otherwise, launch gpedit.msc and navigate to Computer Configuration -> Windows Settings -> Security Settings -> Local Policies -> User Rights Assignment

Environment Variables

GIT_PROMPT=1 turns on a status bar showing current repo state, while AWS_* variables are automatically displayed on another line.

Suggested Packages and Dependencies

• Bash Autocomplete
• Vim
• Python3, Pip3
• pip3 install [--user] wheel, yamllint, demjson3 (nee jsonlint)
• AWS Cli
• AMI tools
• Elastic Beanstalk CLI

Windows Subsystem for Linux

Integration with Windows OS can be trickly and can have unfortunate side-effects like preferring DOS/WIN commands over Linux. The mask directives rationalize how directory listings appear as WSL interprets NTFS security markings.

# file:/etc/wsl.conf

[automount]
enabled=true
options="metadata,umask=027"

[interop]
enabled=false
appendWindowsPath=false

[boot]
command=chmod a+w,o+t /run;/etc/rc.local;/etc/init.d/<service>; ...

It takes >8 seconds after exiting all WSL instances for the daemon to reload. Use wsl --shutdown to force the issue.