Re: Windows support

From: Steffen Prohaska <prohaska@zib.de>
Date: Jul 26, 2007, 06:25 UTC
Message-ID: <08588116-8E66-4F40-BC77-E0B272BE7776@zib.de>
In-Reply-To: <20070726031546.GN32566@spearce.org>

On Jul 26, 2007, at 5:15 AM, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> Why Cygwin?  Because I have to use Windows, but I'd rather use Linux.
> No, Linux isn't permitted.  And Solaris/x86 is only allowed on
> "servers".  I have yet to find a way to classify my desktop as
> a server.  :-|
>
> git-gui is fairly well supported under Cygwin, as I use it a lot
> in my day-job.  As do a lot of my coworkers.  Which actually gives
> me a pretty good testing ground; ~20 people all beating on git-gui
> all day long is a pretty sizable testing group.  I actually wonder
> some days if git-gui is better tested on Cygwin than it is on Linux.
>
> But as has been stated on this thread, Cygwin isn't native Windows.

So apparently you're working in a reasonably sized group of people all testing git on cygwin. I'd be completely satisfied if git ran rock solid on cygwin.

I found the following list of warnings about cygwin in the wiki entry WindowsInstall [1]. Some points look quite scary to me.

What is your real-world experience? Are the warning still valid? Must I really fear to break cygwin if I press Ctrl-C?

Do I really need to reboot regularly? I don't think this is an option. Nowadays our Windows boxes run for months, too. I can't seriously tell people that they need to regularly reboot if they want to use git.

Here's the list, copied from http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/WindowsInstall

    * Use git on local NTFS disks -- Network drives disks don't  
support the filesystem semantics GIT needs; for interoperability  
purposes you can store bare repositories on FAT32 disks.
    * Be careful with the case in filenames. Similarly, avoid special  
chars in filenames.
    * Run git gc early and often. There are slowdowns with many  
unpacked objects. Be careful to not create very big packfiles (bigger  
than 2 Gb).
    * Avoid using ActiveState Perl if possible. Ask in the  
MailingLists if you must.
    * Try to avoid interrupting (Ctrl-C) processes - it breaks cygwin.
    * Consider setting core.fileMode to false (git repo-config  
core.fileMode false) if file modes are frequently the only  
differences detected by Git. Many Windows applications make the  
execute bit be set in Cygwin when they save a file. Besides Cygwin  
detects file mode by stupid combination of content analysis, file  
name extension and moon phase.
    * Insert "set CYGWIN=tty binmode" after the first line of C: 
\cygwin\cygwin.bat, so you can use Ctrl-z in cygwin's bash to suspend  
a program.
    * Windows usually writes end-of-line as CRLF, while Unix/POSIX  
writes LF. This can cause a variety of problems. There are current  
efforts to address this.
    * Setup binary mode for cygwin (there is an option in cygwin's  
setup program), otherwise Cygwin mangles everything read and written  
(Git repos have binary files in control structures).
    * Avoid big repos.
    * Avoid big blobs (very big files. Basically anything larger than  
10Mb is too big).
    * Avoid big trees (directories with many files in them).
    * Avoid deep hierarchies.
    * Reboot regularly (memory fragmentation)
    * Defragment often (filesystems fragmentation)

	Steffen