Why is my .bashrc not read under cygwin?

My .bashrc looks like this:

alias name@server="ssh server sname"
echo "bashrc read"

The echo statement is just for checking if it is read. But the echo does nothing. I want to set an alias for a quicker ssh into a box doing a certain command which is a working alias on the remote box.

Solution 1:

I haven't used cygwin in some time, but I'm guessing that it wants ~/.bash_profile. Simple fix to test.

ln -s ~/.bashrc ~/.bash_profile

Or if ~/.bash_profile exists, source .bashrc.

if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]
then
  . ~/.bashrc
fi

Solution 2:

Because your cygwin bash is a login shell which reads the profile files, not the rc files. See jtimberman's answer for the second part of the answer... .

Solution 3:

as jtimberman said, it's probably using .bash_profile. Another one to remember about is .profile.