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 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

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for Windows  msysgit  will run in its own shell  dos with git-cmd bat or bash with Git Bash vbs  Update 2016  msysgit is obsolete  and the new Git for Windows now uses msys2 Git on Cygwin  after installing its package  will run in its own cygwin bash shell       Finally  since Q3 2016 and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

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

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

[git] Running Git through Cygwin from Windows

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