CygExtReg

A utility program allowing to register an extension (eg. .sh) to be executed in Cygwin by double-clicking a file from Windows File Explorer or by dragging and dropping files to an icon of a registered extension.

You can use any scripting language installed on your Cygwin. Just define the preferred shebang line, eg. #!/usr/bin/python3

Installing

Install cygextreg via Cygwin setup.

To install manually, download the latest version for 32-bit (i686) or 64-bit (x86_64) Cygwin installation. Extract the contents of a zip to the root of your Cygwin directory.

Installing from source

Install Cygwin packages:

gcc-g++ make automake autoconf

Get the source:

git clone https://github.com/sop/cygextreg.git

Prepare environment:

aclocal && autoheader && automake --add-missing && autoconf

Compile and install:

./configure && make && make install-strip

Usage

Register default (.sh) filetype:

cygextreg -r

Default is to register only for the current user. To register for all users, use cygextreg -ra. Note that this prompts for an elevated process.

To unregister default filetype:

cygextreg -u

To register another filetype (eg. .bash), pass the extension as an --ext argument:

cygextreg -r --ext bash

Internals

Scripts are executed with bash in an interactive login shell. This means that your ~/.bash_profile will be executed first, which usually sources ~/.bashrc as well. This way you can alter your environment, eg. by modifying the $PATH variable.

Bash is started in a MinTTY terminal with UTF-8 charset. All arguments that are Windows style paths are automatically converted to Cygwin equivalents (/cygdrive/...). So if you drag and drop a file to a script icon, the script receives the dropped file's path in Cygwin format as a first argument.

Multiple files can be dragged and dropped to a registered file type. The script receives paths as separate arguments, eg. $1, $2, $3, etc. (or $@) in bash script or sys.argv[1:] in Python.

If the executed script exits with a non-zero code, MinTTY window shall be kept open so that you have a chance to review the output. If the script succeeds (exits with code 0), MinTTY window is closed automatically.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.