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Ask HN: How is Git on Windows today?

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Re: Ask HN: How is Git on Windows today?

#11
post #6

Do the devs already know git, or will it be a new experience for them? No matter what tool(s) you use, learning to use git effectively will be the hardest part. I use TortoiseGit integrated into Windows Explorer for most stuff, and drop down to the command line in the odd situation where it's needed. I can't give much feedback about the server side, I'm using GitHub.

Let me know how that is. I know someone who tried it about a year ago, and it caused explorer to crash regularly.

Re: Ask HN: How is Git on Windows today?

#12

I use msysgit daily on Windows 7 against a github account. For the most part things work fine but there are a few things that annoy me: - Disagreements about case insensitive paths sometimes confuse git. Renaming a folder simply to change its case is the most common one that catches me. - I run everything through the bash shell which works fine but is a pain to connect to Windows batch files. This makes automation ha…

I've used Git on Windows for over a year. msysgit is great, once you've worked out the line endings (the installation asks you for this setting)

Using the windows CMD shell works fine.

Git comes with its own SSH that works different to other SSH implementations. I've had problems where Git is earlier in the path, so its SSH was overriding the one I wanted. This broke cwRsync until I worked it out.

Re: Ask HN: How is Git on Windows today?

#13
I've been using git on windows exclusively for about a year now (I think), in an environment where the central repo is subversion.

The initial import took a ridiculous amount of time (so I did it on a mac eventually), but from that point on I've been flying. The only itchy bit so far is the autocrlf part.

I've found "gitk" and "git gui" good as well. You might find them more than merely adequate. I've used Tortoise with svn, but not with git, so dunno about that, but I'd recommend git gui without hesitation.

Re: Ask HN: How is Git on Windows today?

#14
I use msysgit locally on my machine with a svn repository upstream. Everything seems to work fine for me in my daily work. Like another commenter noted, the initial import took a really long time, and would stop seemingly randomly.

Re: Ask HN: How is Git on Windows today?

#15

I use msysgit daily on Windows 7 against a github account. For the most part things work fine but there are a few things that annoy me: - Disagreements about case insensitive paths sometimes confuse git. Renaming a folder simply to change its case is the most common one that catches me. - I run everything through the bash shell which works fine but is a pain to connect to Windows batch files. This makes automation ha…

> - I run everything through the bash shell which works fine but is a pain to connect to Windows batch files. This makes automation harder than required. What are you using bash or batch files for? Have you tried PowerShell as a replacement for batch files?

My scripts are mostly trivial so far. PowerShell is awesome but it's another thing I haven't had time to learn enough about to use effectively.

I actually have a C# console app as my build script because I can write things there so much faster than anywhere else. It makes calls to Windows and the occasional batch / bash script.

Re: Ask HN: How is Git on Windows today?

#16

I use msysgit daily on Windows 7 against a github account. For the most part things work fine but there are a few things that annoy me: - Disagreements about case insensitive paths sometimes confuse git. Renaming a folder simply to change its case is the most common one that catches me. - I run everything through the bash shell which works fine but is a pain to connect to Windows batch files. This makes automation ha…

I've used Git on Windows for over a year. msysgit is great, once you've worked out the line endings (the installation asks you for this setting) Using the windows CMD shell works fine. Git comes with its own SSH that works different to other SSH implementations. I've had problems where Git is earlier in the path, so its SSH was overriding the one I wanted. This broke cwRsync until I worked it out.

This is why I only use it through the bash shell, so it can't mess with anything else. Inconvenient though.

Re: Ask HN: How is Git on Windows today?

#17
post #6

Do the devs already know git, or will it be a new experience for them? No matter what tool(s) you use, learning to use git effectively will be the hardest part. I use TortoiseGit integrated into Windows Explorer for most stuff, and drop down to the command line in the odd situation where it's needed. I can't give much feedback about the server side, I'm using GitHub.

Moving from SVN to a simple pull, modify, push model is pretty straight forward. Learning git properly is tricky.

Re: Ask HN: How is Git on Windows today?

#18
post #6

Do the devs already know git, or will it be a new experience for them? No matter what tool(s) you use, learning to use git effectively will be the hardest part. I use TortoiseGit integrated into Windows Explorer for most stuff, and drop down to the command line in the odd situation where it's needed. I can't give much feedback about the server side, I'm using GitHub.

I am pleased to see TortoiseGit, does it have any big issues? I remember hearing about it a while ago being very "beta" software.

I used it about 6 months ago but ended up uninstalling it; it had a nasty habit of locking my git repo when I needed it and then crashing. Haven't used it since.

Re: Ask HN: How is Git on Windows today?

#19
msysgit is quite good, provided you turn off linefeed conversion. I wrote about some ways to make it easier for day to day use, if you're interested: http://mullr.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/configuring-msysgit-fo...

Avoid cygwin git; it appears to work at first, but it gets very slow when you deal with large repositories.

None of the end-to-end GUIs I've used (I've tried about 5) do a respectable job. They all try to layer a svn-style view on top of git. Which is, of course, nothing like svn. Have them watch http://blip.tv/file/4094854, then offer to hold their hand while they get used to the command line. It's worth it. When you really need to click on things, git gui and gitk do the job fine.

Re: Ask HN: How is Git on Windows today?

#20
Git is usable on Windows - I've used it for the past year with cygwin. However my colleagues mostly switched to msysgit as they had issues with cygwin - msysgit looks like a better choice. Our server is on Linux though - I'm not sure how it will fare on Windows. We went through a few gotchas (crlf, case-insensitivity) but it was manageable.

Manageable is the most I can say though. I've come to the conclusion that going through the trouble of msysgit/cygwin is not worth it. I don't know if it's an option for you but have you considered other DVCS? From what I heard Mercurial is pretty good on Windows and you'd get pretty much the same advantages as with Git. Others might be able to tell you more about it.

I wouldn't go back to SVN on any platform though - I got addicted to local branches and the speed of having the whole repo locally.

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