title: Unix utilities for Windows: MSYS link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/unix-utilities-for-windows-msys/ author: lembobro description: post_id: 224 created: 2009/10/22 19:03:32 created_gmt: 2009/10/22 19:03:32 comment_status: open post_name: unix-utilities-for-windows-msys status: publish post_type: post

Unix utilities for Windows: MSYS

MSYS is a set of Unix utility packages for Windows originally published to support the MinGW, “Minimalist GNU for Windows”, build environment for Win32 systems. Basically MinGW is a toolkit for porting GNU software to the Windows platform, including a complete set of compilers and other utilities needed for the build process.

The nice thing about the MSYS utilities is that, like most of the binaries available in the Cygwin environment, they can be run directly from the Windows command shell as long as they’re in your PATH. The major difference from Cygwin is that MSYS contains a much smaller list of basic console applications and therefore a smaller footprint on your machine .

Because I do most of my work on Unix boxes, either on the local desktop or through remote ssh/vnc sessions, I don’t need anything as full featured as Cygwin for daily use. But there are times when having a copy of GNU tar comes in handy, and for that I’ve installed MSYS on all my Windows clients.

Copyright 2004-2019 Phil Lembo