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I've been using msysgit for quite a while for Git on Windows, but I'm now trying to set up MinGW for the first time. I installed MSYS with mingw-get since it has some utils not packaged with msysgit (make, xz, etc.).

I've some across some threads for running Git in the MSYS shell, but I'd prefer to use the msysgit shell instead since it maps the home directory to my Windows one and shows Git information on the prompt. To access MinGW and MSYS programs from my msysgit shell, I added the following to .bashrc:

export PATH=$PATH:/c/MinGW/bin/:/c/MinGW/msys/1.0/bin/

However, running any of the MSYS utils causes the prompt to hang, and ending them with Ctrl-C crashes the util, bringing up the "x has stopped working dialog". If I try to run the utils in the MSYS shell or cmd.exe, they work fine.

Is there some configuration I have to change with msysigit? What could be going wrong?

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Matt Kline
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1 Answers1

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I suggest you just add the "Program Files (x86)\Git\cmd" directory to the path of your msys shell and use it like you would for just the Windows cmd prompt. This adds the git wrapper executable to the path so git can adjust its environment as it runs and avoids interfering with your other msys environment. Adding just the cmd subdirectory means Git for Windows only adds two commands - git and gitk. In Git for Windows, there is a modified msys which may well be incompatible with the standard msys utils. Using the cmd wrapper should avoid clashes.

patthoyts
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  • It's likely true that I'll be better off running Git from MSYS instead of vice versa, but do you have any idea why I can't run the MSYS programs from inside msysgit's shell? – Matt Kline Dec 17 '12 at 08:33
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    yes - the final sentence in my answer points out that msysGit is using a modified msys. That is the msys-1.0.dll is patched and may be incompatible with normal msys utils. – patthoyts Dec 17 '12 at 16:16