Installing Git under MinGW (+MSys)

[Joel Salomon]

I tried to ask this question about two months back, but now I’ve
learned enough to make sense:

I develop programs under MinGW, and use the MSys environment & tools
to make my life easier. As supplied by this project, Git comes with a
private MSys.

Searching the web and this mailing list, it seems that there is a
“MinGW port” at <http://repo.or.cz/w/git/mingw.git>, but that looks
like something I have to compile myself, rather than an installable
package. On the other hand, it may fit more nicely into the system I
already have.

Is there any real reason for me to try to compile the MinGW port for
myself, or am I better off with the duplicate MSys installations?
What are the trade-offs either way?

—Joel Salomon

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi,

On Mon, 30 Nov 2009, Joel Salomon wrote:

> I tried to ask this question about two months back, but now I�ve

> learned enough to make sense:
>
> I develop programs under MinGW, and use the MSys environment & tools
> to make my life easier. As supplied by this project, Git comes with a
> private MSys.
>
> Searching the web and this mailing list, it seems that there is a

> �MinGW port� at <http://repo.or.cz/w/git/mingw.git>, but that looks

> like something I have to compile myself, rather than an installable
> package. On the other hand, it may fit more nicely into the system I
> already have.
>
> Is there any real reason for me to try to compile the MinGW port for
> myself, or am I better off with the duplicate MSys installations?
> What are the trade-offs either way?

If you want to use Git without the bare MSys that is shipped with Git for
Windows, you either have to cobble up your own package, try to extract the
bare minimum from the portable Git distribution, or you have to live with
a duplicate MSys.

This is Open Source. If you want something to happen, you do it.

Ciao,
Dscho

[Johannes Sixt]

On Dienstag, 1. Dezember 2009, Joel Salomon wrote:
> Searching the web and this mailing list, it seems that there is a

> �MinGW port� at <http://repo.or.cz/w/git/mingw.git>, but that looks

> like something I have to compile myself, rather than an installable
> package. On the other hand, it may fit more nicely into the system I
> already have.
>
> Is there any real reason for me to try to compile the MinGW port for
> myself, or am I better off with the duplicate MSys installations?
> What are the trade-offs either way?

I think you can get away with your existing installation. Compilation should
be a matter of

make prefix="c:/program files/git" all install

(It may not be so straight-forward if you still have gcc 3, though.)

Msysgit has a tweaked MSys DLL that less often does c:/foo -> /c/foo
conversions. This was needed for some scripted git tools. Be prepared for
surprises with the "vanilla" MSys. Nevertheless, you can expect that the
majority of the tools work after you add $prefix/bin to your PATH.

-- Hannes

[Alexey Borzenkov]

On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 10:39 PM, Johannes Sixt <j...@kdbg.org> wrote:
> Msysgit has a tweaked MSys DLL that less often does c:/foo -> /c/foo
> conversions. This was needed for some scripted git tools. Be prepared for
> surprises with the "vanilla" MSys. Nevertheless, you can expect that the
> majority of the tools work after you add $prefix/bin to your PATH.

Oh, wow, cool. Though that makes me wonder how they have been
modified. I found commits 4c904cc1493c0043c56a97a2abe54a003daacb39 and
2d3b56a62bd11518db7bb15b75bd81fd7ae65d6d, but they are based on
1.0.11-20090120, while src/rt has patches for 1.0.11-20071204. Makes
me wonder where one can find exact patches for those msys dlls?

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi,

Man, this is Open Source. I used exactly those patches to make the new
dll.

Ciao,
Dscho

[Alexey Borzenkov]

On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 3:17 PM, Johannes Schindelin
<Johannes....@gmx.de> wrote:
>> Oh, wow, cool. Though that makes me wonder how they have been
>> modified. I found commits 4c904cc1493c0043c56a97a2abe54a003daacb39 and
>> 2d3b56a62bd11518db7bb15b75bd81fd7ae65d6d, but they are based on
>> 1.0.11-20090120, while src/rt has patches for 1.0.11-20071204. Makes
>> me wonder where one can find exact patches for those msys dlls?
> Man, this is Open Source.  I used exactly those patches to make the new
> dll.

Hmm, that's odd. Maybe you didn't commit them? src/rt was last changed
in 2008, and patches don't have any mention of HOMEDRIVE, HOMEPATH or
CYGWIN. The commits in question update only msys-1.0.dll, no source
code or patches. Maybe you have some other repo?

[Cesar Strauss]

The msys branch seems to have the latest patches for msys-1.0.dll:

http://repo.or.cz/w/msysgit.git/tree/msys:/src/rt/patches

Regards,
Cesar

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi,

On Mon, 7 Dec 2009, Alexey Borzenkov wrote:

msys-1.0.dll is, as the name suggests, something MSys-y. So it is built
on the 'msys' branch.

Hth,
Dscho

[Alexey Borzenkov]

Ah, thanks a lot!
Didn't see that, sorry... :-/