Hyper: Hyper starts in my User folder instead of $HOME for Zsh on Windows

[OmriSama]

• [x] I am on the latest Hyper.app version
• [x] I have searched the issues of this repo and believe that this is not a duplicate

• OS version and name: Windows 10, Build 1709
• Hyper.app version: Latest

Here is my hyper.js file:
https://gist.github.com/OmriSama/5193f8bfff4371369cc3ae3d30f56781

Issue

Hi everyone. I spent a good chunk of time today updating my Windows 10 to the latest version so I could use wsl.exe instead of bash.exe; now I have zsh set as my default shell and after getting annoyed with Cmder I decided to give Hyper another try (although start up times are slow, it does look really nice).

An issue:

Albeit slow, context menu "Open Hyper Here" works fine.
What doesn't work fine is a normal startup from say, a shortcut I have on the Taskbar. My default shell is set to wsl.exe and yet still, my normal terminal window starts in $HOME while my Hyper decides to start up in Users/myusername.

This is really confusing and I have no idea why it's doing this. I'm very tempted to get the Dev build going so I can maybe debug it? But I was hoping someone here would have insight first...

Thanks everyone

[albinekb]

one step of the issue template (that you removed) is to copy your .hyper.js contents to a gist (or similar), could you do that?

1. So everyone can know and reproduce your env, how you have configured wsl.exe for example
2. So i can see if you have added --login or not to shellArgs and not have to ask you 👍

https://github.com/zeit/hyper/blob/canary/app/config/config-default.js#L92

Thanks 🙌

[OmriSama]

@albinekb hi! I added it in the OP. Let me know :)

[mwcarew]

Having the same issue but I'm on canary. If I boot up just WSL /w Zsh, I start in $HOME. When I boot up through Hyper, I start in my Windows user folder.

https://gist.github.com/mwcarew/1562f88dd6af1d233d7704044714638b

Everything is working wonderfully otherwise!

[jimv3]

If I do this "shellArgs: ['~']" then hyper launches in my WSL home on Windows instead of the Windows user directory.

[mwcarew]

I'm not on my home PC for a while and can't mess with this, but would that affect my launch location if I'm right-clicking in Explorer to use the context option "Open Hyper here"? I'd imagine I'd now start in my home directory regardless.

[jimv3]

On my machine it opens in my WSL home even from explorer.

[mwcarew]

OK yeah. Not quite the behavior I'm hoping for from it.

[sandangel]

How can I set an default startup folder like D:\Works instead of '~'
I'm using Git bash for Windows because wsl is very slow on node process. I have tried with

{
  shell: 'C:\\Program Files\\Git\\bin\\bash.exe',
  shellArgs: ['D:\\Works']
}

but it does not work

[Stanzilla]

See also https://github.com/zeit/hyper/issues/1133

[madushanl]

Open .zshrc file using vim or nano, at the bottom, add :
cd ~
Save and restart Hyper Terminal

[benc-uk]

Adding cd ~ to your .zshrc causes problems elsewhere (e.g. using WSL Bash in VSCode). Simple fix I found was to use this in my hyper config

shell: 'C:\\Windows\\System32\\bash.exe',
shellArgs: ['-c', 'cd ~ && zsh']

[mrchief]

@benc-uk solution is nice! I can keep bash and use zsh in hyper (better than chsh to zsh). Note that if you use shell args, make sure your shell points to 'C:\\Windows\\System32\\bash.exe'. Pointing it to 'C:\\Windows\\System32\\wsl.exe' will cause hyper to quit as soon as it launches.

[benhillis]

If you're trying to use wsl.exe, keep in mind it has it's own argument parsing rules (which are different than bash.exe which passes everything along to /bin/bash).

    shell: 'C:\\Windows\\System32\\wsl.exe',

    // for setting shell arguments (i.e. for using interactive shellArgs: `['-i']`)
    // by default `['--login']` will be used
    shellArgs: [],

[benc-uk]

The wsl.exe method is a lot better than my workaround :)

[mrchief]

@benc-uk That depends. E.g., I use fish/zsh shell. If I change my shell to fish/zsh via chsh, and then use wsl.exe, what I found is not everything works as expected - especially with node version manager switching versions, or installing node modules. However, if I launch bash and then switch to fish/zsh (either manually or via bashrc), things work a lot better.

Further, if there are scripts/packages that expect bash to behave like bash, chsh kind of interferes with that.

[richeney]

Slight variant of Ben's that I've just tested out. It replaces the current shell rather than going into a child shell:

    shell: 'C:\\Windows\\System32\\bash.exe',
    shellArgs: ['-c', 'cd ~ && exec $SHELL'],

@sandangel, for Git Bash (which I dislike myself, but I understand your reasons), your config would probably be:

  shell: 'C:\\Program Files\\Git\\bin\\bash.exe',
  shellArgs: ['-c', 'cd /d/Works ~ && exec $SHELL'],

In WSL then that folder would be /mnt/d/Works.

[benc-uk]

I was just revisiting my hyper.js config and the bash.exe route I was using bugged me slightly.
After some trial and error the most elegant solution I've found so far is this

    shell: 'C:\\Windows\\System32\\wsl.exe',
    shellArgs: ['~']

It's better IMO than starting bash to then launch another shell, the startup seems fractionally faster

[Stanzilla]

bash.exe is deprecated anyway, everything should go through wsl.exe

[TJVaughn]

This is my shell:
shell: 'C:\\Windows\\System32\\bash.exe',

I removed the --login from 'shellArgs' and added the code below
shellArgs: ['-c', 'cd ~/../../mnt/d/hauck/code/react-apps/ && exec $SHELL'],

Now it opens to the file I desire.

[Stanzilla]

@TJVaughn stop using bash.exe, wsl.exe instead

[HymanZHAN]

@Stanzilla If that's the case the hyper.js config file should be updated accordingly. Otherwise, the helper text makes it quite confusing. Last time I checked it still said the following:

    // Bash on Windows
    // - Example: `C:\\Windows\\System32\\bash.exe`

@benc-uk Thanks for your answer. wsl.exe with ~ shellArgs works perfectly with zsh.

[Stanzilla]

Yup!

[blisst]

This was the best solution for me if I wanted to start in D:\Coding, which was not the $HOME folder. This info was kind of hard to find so thought I'd post here

shell: 'C:\\Windows\\System32\\bash.exe',
shellArgs: ["-c", "cd /mnt/d/Coding && exec /mnt/c/Windows/System32/wsl.exe"]

[emmiep]

I find this really annoying, but I found one possible solution. Running [distribution.exe] instead of wsl.exe or bash.exe always make you start in $HOME.

For instance, I'm using Debian so I'm having this configuration

{
  shell: "debian.exe",
  shellArgs: []
}

The downside is if you switch your default distribution you have to update .hyper.js, but if you only ever use one distro it's probably not a big deal.

[dracos]

That works for starting directly, but breaks the right click "Open Hyper here" link; it always opens the home directory.
What worked for me was to alter the shortcut you have (on the taskbar, wherever) so that its target is ...Hyper.exe \\wsl$\Ubuntu\home\matthew (changing to your own distro/homedir of course). This maintains it working from Explorer and launches in the linux home directory when starting that shortcut directly.

[ProcrastinatingEntrepreneur]

Adding cd ~ to your .zshrc causes problems elsewhere (e.g. using WSL Bash in VSCode). Simple fix I found was to use this in my hyper config

shell: 'C:\\Windows\\System32\\bash.exe',
shellArgs: ['-c', 'cd ~ && zsh']

Thank you! You solved all my problems!