Configuration Locations

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

For native Windows programs the situation is a bit more complicated. For theuser configuration some programs use the standard Windows paths, such as%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming. In some cases native Windows programs areminimally ported from Unix and will write to%USERPROFILE%\.appname or%USERPROFILE%\.config\appname, or they will prefer theHOME environmentvariable overUSERPROFILE and store their configuration in$HOME\.appname or$HOME\.config\appname like their Unix variants. For the system configurationsome programs might store them alongside their other data files or in case theywere 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 nativeprograms to follow Windows conventions and be independent from MSYS2. Also wedon't want to change the behavior of programs compared to their upstreamversions unless we have to.