Windows Terminal Setup with Git Bash and Hyper

2019-08-07 — Written by Lance Pu

Okay... I'm switching back...

A few days back I wrote an article talking about using the Windows Subsystem for Linux, zsh, oh-my-zsh and Hyper as my Windows terminal/development solution. However, after using it a few days, I find that it makes my life harder...

First of all, I have to install all my packages in Linux, such as NodeJS and Python (I know...Ubuntu comes with Python preinstalled, but I need to upgrade it to > 3.6 to get some new features working). Secondly, my Windows directory is located at /mnt/c/Users/lance, this makes navigating between Linux and Windows tedious, and some of my projects references my local Windows directory, so I have to change all that...tedious...

You can see my previous setup of Hyper and zsh here

Install Git Bash

Download Git Bash

Install Hyper

Download https://hyper.is/

Configure Hyper to use Git Bash

Launch Hyper
Open Preferences (ctrl + , or Right click on the terminal window and select Preferences)

Look for shell and configure the following:

shell: 'C:\\Program Files\\Git\\bin\\sh.exe',

Look for shellArgs and configure the following:
```
shellArgs: ['--login', '-i'],
```
OPTIONAL - You can also install some Hyper plugins under the plugins section in Preferences, you can refer to my previous article about plugins.

That's it! Much simplier than using WSL

Bonus

Adding Alias. As some of you might know, aliases are like shortcuts to execute commands. Git Bash has included two shortcuts you can use, ll and ls. If you type alias on the terminal, you will see a list of preconfigured shortcuts.

To add more, you need to configure the .bashrc file. If your computer does not already have it, make one by using touch ~/.bashrc

Open the .bashrc file using a code editor and add: Here are some of mine:
```
alias startagent="eval $(ssh-agent -s)"
alias ll="ls -l -a"
```
The startagent alias starts a ssh-agent for you to add sshkey to. The ll alias I modified to show hidden files using the -a switch

NOTE - There's no space between alias name equal sign (=) and command

After you save and close the .bashrc file, use the command source ~/.bashrc enable your changes, you can also restart your Terminal.
Type alias again in the terminal, if everything is configured correctly, you will see your customized alias on the list.
To use your alias, simply type the alias name, such as startagent on the terminal.

Thanks for reading!