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configuration.md

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Configuration Locations

Cygwin packages, like openssh and git, follow the standard Unix conventions and use your $HOME or $HOME/.config directory for storing the user configuration and /etc for the system configuration.

For native Windows programs the situation is a bit more complicated. For the user configuration some programs use the standard Windows paths, such as %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming. In some cases native Windows programs are minimally ported from Unix and will write to %USERPROFILE%\.appname or %USERPROFILE%\.config\appname, or they will prefer the HOME environment variable over USERPROFILE and store their configuration in $HOME\.appname or $HOME\.config\appname like their Unix variants. For the system configuration some programs might store them alongside their other data files or in case they were ported from Unix they might follow the Unix layout and store things in $MINGW_PREFIX/etc/appname

FAQ

Can't all programs use the same location for their user configuration?

While having two locations for configuration can be confusing we want native programs to follow Windows conventions and be independent from MSYS2. Also we don't want to change the behavior of programs compared to their upstream versions unless we have to.

That said, sharing the location for multiple installation of applications is still possible, in the sense that:

  • Packages with different prefixes may share the same configuration
    location (as the default of some native x86/x64 Win32 applications).
  • The shared location is not actively checked against by the runtime, so it is possible to have different path pointing to the same file system location and the applications may actually work.

Shared location can be implemented by setting the value of HOME environment varible (which can be interited from Windows environment) or symbolic link on directories, for instance. This is not normally supported. Individual applications may fail because they do not expect the configuration being shared (e.g. a Unix application may be only compatible to LF as line endings in its configuration files, and it will fail to parse CR+LF line endings written by a Win32 native application). Some applications (like Mercurial) have different search paths for Win32/Unix environments. However, such layout may be useful for testing. Use with your own risks when you really know the consequences.