Is Cygwin, MinGW-w64, Mintty & MSYS2 included/employed with git for windows?

[Donald Harrison]

All,

Is Cygwin, MinGW-w64, Mintty & MSYS2 included/employed with git for windows?

Thank you,

[Konstantin Khomoutov]

On Thu, Sep 19, 2024 at 06:53:08AM -0700, Donald Harrison wrote:

> Is Cygwin, MinGW-w64, Mintty & MSYS2 included/employed with git for windows?

From this list -

1. MSYS2 is based on Cygwin (uses its source code) but it's not Cygwin.
GfW is based on MSYS2, so it does not use Cygwin.
Because of this, Cygwin is not provided by GfW.

2. MinGW-w64 is a compiler/assembler/linker toolchain (for C, C++ and a
couple other PLs). Git does not rely on the compiler to function,
and hence this thing is also not provided by GfW.

3. MinTTY is installed, and it's what hosts the Windows port of Bash
(packaged by GfW) when you run what is available as "Git Bash"
via various menus provided by Explorer.

4. GfW patches MSYS2, and uses the DLLs it provides and some executables
(CLI tools the existence of which is required for GfW or is comfortable
for Git users coming from Unix-based systems), so in a sense GfW
provides MSYS2 but it's not a "pristine" one. It also does not install
Pacman, IIRC.

All-in-all, I would only consider MinTTY as being provided. If you need
MinGW-w64 and "pristine" MSYS2, it's better to install them using their
official installation methods.

[Donald Harrison]

Perfect - thanks for clarifying!