Autobuild/Cygwin

Previously, Windows users with a "native" Python install were advised to avoid the Cygwin shell like the plague.

However, things should be better now. We are now using the distribute extension of the python setuptools, so the autobuild application installed should now be equally executable by any shell.

If you want to run autobuild directly from a mercurial checkout without installing, we still provide the autobuild.cmd wrapper. It can be used by executing the following:

ln -s /path/to/autobuild/checkout/bin/autobuild.cmd ~/bin/autobuild
export PATH="$PATH:~/bin/"

or by adding /path/to/autobuild/checkout/bin to your windows PATH.

However, as this is trickier to set up and more error prone, it is not the primary method that we recommend in Autobuild#Getting_Autobuild.