Running Git through Cygwin from Windows

Question

I have started using Cygwin recently for other purposes and already have Git installed on my PC  I understand I can run the executable and install Git into Cygwin  but since I already have it installed I would like Cygwin to just use my Windows installation  I have tried researching how to make the path redirect in various ways but with no success  can someone help me out

User · Answer

I confirm that git and msysgit can coexist on the same computer, as mentioned in "Which GIT version to use cygwin or msysGit or both?".

Git for Windows (msysgit) will run in its own shell (dos with git-cmd.bat or bash with Git Bash.vbs)
Update 2016: msysgit is obsolete, and the new Git for Windows now uses msys2
Git on Cygwin, after installing its package, will run in its own cygwin bash shell.

git package selection on Cygwin

Finally, since Q3 2016 and the "Windows 10 anniversary update", you can use Git in a bash (an actual Ubuntu(!) bash).

In there, you can do a sudo apt-get install git-core and start using git on project-sources present either on the WSL container's "native" file-system (see below), or in the hosting Windows's file-system through the /mnt/c/..., /mnt/d/... directory hierarchies.

Specifically for the Bash on Windows or WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux):

It is a light-weight virtualization container (technically, a "Drawbridge" pico-process,
hosting an unmodified "headless" Linux distribution (i.e. Ubuntu minus the kernel),
which can execute terminal-based commands (and even X-server client apps if an X-server for Windows is installed),
with emulated access to the Windows file-system (meaning that, apart from reduced performance, encodings for files in DrvFs emulated file-system may not behave the same as files on the native VolFs file-system).

Unfortunately, it cannot invoke back into Windows executables, or

interact with any native drivers (i.e. so no Graphic card, no USB drives yet).

User · Answer

I can tell you from personal experience this is a bad idea  Native Windows programs cannot accept Cygwin paths  For example with Cygwin you might run a command  grep -r --color foo  opt   with no issue  With Cygwin   represents the root directory  Native Windows programs have no concept of this  and will likely fail if invoked this way  You should not mix Cygwin and Native Windows programs unless you have no other choice   Uninstall what Git you have and install the Cygwin git package  save yourself the headache

User · Answer

Isn t this as simple as adding your git install to your Windows path   E g  Win R rundll32 exe sysdm cpl EditEnvironmentVariables Edit   PATH appending your Mysysgit install path e g   C  Program Files  x86  Git bin  Re-run Cygwin and voila  As Cygwin automatically loads in the Windows environment  so too will your native install of Git

User · Answer

call your  windows- git with cygpath as parameter  in order to convert the  calling path   I m confused why that should be a problem

[git] Running Git through Cygwin from Windows

Examples related to git

Examples related to cygwin