What is the best way to use linux utilities under windows?

Question

Linux utilities like sed, awk and other shell scripting features are awesome and life becomes a lot harder when I am developing on windows and cant use any of these.

People suggest to use cygwin for those who want the linux like tools under windows. But I feel cygwin will be an overkill for someone who only wants to use the handful commands.

Some say that Windows Services for Unix can also be a good alternative.

I have used none of these. Can some experienced programmer suggest best/simplest way to do this? of course apart from switching to linux itself.

Answer 1

I think the GnuWin32 project is exactly what you're looking for. Unix command line tools ported to Windows.

Answer 2

There's a GNU port of many of the utils. I find that quite useful.

If you need Perl, I recommend Strawberry Perl.

Answer 3

I've been using UnxUtils which are ports of common GNU utilities to native Win32 for ages.

I should add that I've also used Cygwin (et al.) and Microsoft's Services for Unix and neither of them were any good for me because they don't work as well as native versions from the command prompt, and using ksh/bash/whatever under Windows never really works right, even though I use ksh under unix all the time.

Answer 4

I tried something like this quite often, but to be honest, none of it really works well.

I therefore suggest using a virtual machine (such as VirtualBox) and install a small linux inside that. You can easily move files from and to the guest system with shared folders.

Judging by my experience, it is the best solution I used so far.

Answer 5

Install msysGit (netinstaller), it comes with a (msys/minGW) shell environment.

It also adds a "open shell here" in explorer.

It's faster than Cygwin, but at the sacrifice of unix compatibility.

Answer 6

MSYS is a common alternative for people who find CygWin excessive. It's still a special prompt, but it was originally intended to set up just enough Unix-compatibility to build programs using the MinGW compilers and the typical configure/make routine.

Using tools like sed and awk isn't going to work quite as expected in a normal Windows command prompt. It can be done to a point, but common usage involves command-line syntax that is normally interpreted by the shell, but which the Windows command prompt doesn't support. One example is wildcard file specifications. I've often found that Unix-centric tools aren't as usable on Windows as they assume the shell has expanded those wildcards into lists of files for them.

Answer 7

Maybe it is stupid, but I usually search google for i.e.: "indent windows". You can select tools from mixed platforms. Lot of stuff from open systems has been ported on windows.