When working on Windows, I dislike that msysGit, as the name suggests, depends on MSYS and on tools from the Unix world.
the msysGit installers have the prefix msysGit-.Īnother telltale is that the msysGit installers come in two flavors: fullinstall and netinstall.įurther, msysGit does not install to C:Program Files by default.īut msysGit comes with gcc, the GNU C Compiler.the installers for Git have the prefix Git-,.Git for Windows is an installer which installs Git - and only Git.Without installing any 3rd-party software. It is complete, in the sense that you just need to install msysGit, and then you can build Git. msysGit is the development environment to compile Git for Windows.So unless you need to use any parts of Git that are still implemented only as shell or Perl scripts, you can get away with running plain git.exe.Ī/ You can resize and copy-paste in Git bash, like in any other Windows Shell.ī/ You are probably using "Git for windows", and not msysgit. a program without any link-dependencies on anything but standard Windows libraries. We compile Git as a pure MinGW program, though, i.e.
We ship a more complete MSys environment, including GCC, as build environment (which is therefore nick-named ''msysGit''). MSys is also required to build Git, as we re-use the same Unix-type setup upstream Git uses. Therefore we ship Git for Windows with a very minimal version of MSys. Because many parts of Git are still not builtins programmed in C, but instead shell and Perl scripts, Git for Windows needs such an environment. MSys is an environment for Windows offering a Unix-type shell and a Perl interpreter. See also the msysgit FAQ: What is this "MSys" thing in "MSysGit"? " Git for Windows": Pure users of Git | " MsysGit": for Testers, developers, custom installer maintainers The page clearly illustrates the difference between: Msysgit is here to stay, and unless you need to add a few hundreds of MB for cygwin, you really don't need Cygwin to just use Git on Windows.Īnd if you want to access GitHub, you get one package ("Git for Windows" + ssh keys registered for you on your GitHub account + a nice GUI) with GitHub for windows. using the name " Git for Windows SDK" for the development environment targeting Git for Windows developers).using the name " Git for Windows" for the installer aimed at "end-users" and.work on Git for Windows (with the corresponding GitHub org),.We decided to just phase out the name "msysGit" (as well as the GitHub org of the same name) and:
We now have a light-weight Git for Windows SDK – which is essentially a standard MinGW/MSys system managed through the package manager mingw-get. See more in "How are msys, msys2, and msysgit related to each other?". Since my 2010-2012-2014 answer, in 2015 Git for Windows uses msys2, as I detail here.