Hi Dirk,
I re-C:ed the Git For Windows mailing list because it supersedes the
msysGit mailing list.
On 2015-08-19 08:18, Dirk Heinrichs wrote:
> Am 18.08.2015 um 18:30 schrieb Johannes Schindelin:
>
>> - Another huge benefit is that we benefit from (and contribute to) the
>> very
>> active MSys2 community; MSys2 is a minimal POSIX system (forked from
>> Cygwin) that sports a package manager and many packages that are
>> kept
>> up-to-date.
>>
>> - As a consequence of basing Git for Windows on MSys2's packages, Git
>> for
>> Windows now comes with up-to-date versions of Bash and OpenSSL. Oh,
>> and
>> we finally have support in `git svn` for recent Subversion features!
>
> Is the package manager included? Or i.o.w.: Are users able to add
> additional MSys2 packages to a Git for Windows installation (I strongly
> prefer zsh over bash, for example)?
No, the package manager is not included. The reasons are:
- Git for Windows really aims to be *Git for Windows*, not a replacement
for MSys2. What you seek is really MSys2 which you can configure to your
heart's extent. And since there is already MSys2, there is no reason why
Git for Windows should aim to fill the same niche.
- It would be an unreasonable maintenance burden to support all the
weird different configurations people would want. It would be different
if the Git for Windows community had more volunteers, but as you see
from your own example: there is more asking than there is answering, so
I have to be very careful which components I choose to maintain.
- Users who want to have more than just Git for Windows are strongly
advised to use MSys2 directly. It does not *yet* come with the same Git
version Git for Windows ships, but there is a ticket for it:
https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/issues/284. Once that ticket is
addressed, you can just install MSys2, configure it to your heart's
extent, and get Git for Windows' updates automatically with a simple
`pacman -Syu` command.
- Until Git for Windows is integrated properly into MSys2, you could use
the Git SDK -- which is a friendly fork of MSys2, pre-configured to the
needs of Git for Windows developers. It will do more than you want, e.g.
building Git from scratch, but then, it really caters to Git for Windows
contributors.
- In the interest of reducing bandwidth, the packages' contents are not
included *entirely*. Only a fraction of the files are actually shipped
with Git for Windows (I analyzed which ones are needed, and skip most of
the others). Therefore, even if I included `pacman.exe`, you would be in
trouble because the packages are incomplete. Even worse, the record
which packages were installed is not included -- because it would
contain the entire set of packages I have installed locally to *develop*
Git for Windows.
So you see, it would be a bad idea to include the package manager into
the end-user-facing Git for Windows installation.
Ciao,
Johannes