Re: [PATCH 1/2] user-manual: Simplify the user configuration.

From: Hannu Koivisto <azure@iki.fi>
Date: Jan 22, 2009, 18:59 UTC
Message-ID: <83wscndv57.fsf@kalahari.s2.org>
In-Reply-To: <94a0d4530901220857q1027c05bs137dcc0244a1cc5a@mail.gmail.com>

Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> writes:

Show 10 quoted lines

> On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 6:17 PM, Hannu Koivisto <azure@iki.fi> wrote:
>> Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> This brings back my previous question: where is the home directory in
>>> a Windows system?
>>
>> It's where %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH% points to.
>
> I thought it was something like that. Do we want something like that
> in the manual, or should we assume Windows users know that?

I should have added that Unix programs (i.e. Cygwin programs and even some native ports) probably use %HOME% which may be different from %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%. I recall that if you haven't explicitly set up HOME in Windows environment, Cygwin sets it up magically from passwd or falls back to %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%. I have no idea if msysgit respects %HOME% if it is set or always uses %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH% or something completely different (user profile, most likely).

It certainly may be that "home directory" is a foreign concept to some Windows users. Some might know it as a user profile or a personal folder (just guessing, I'm pretty isolated from less experienced Windows users), even though user profile is a separate concept from "home directory" (note that there is %USERPROFILE% which by default is the same as %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH% at least in XP).

In any case, what Cygwin git does should be expected by Cygwin users. If msysgit wanted to be a really native Windows application and store the configuration where Microsoft thinks it should be stored, it probably shouldn't store the config under "home directory" to begin with (I'm guessing that's what it does) but under %USERPROFILE\Application Data\Git (...FILE\Local Settings\... in case non-roaming storage is wanted). And in that case the manual might be misleading for msysgit users. See e.g. <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms995853.aspx>.

-- 
Hannu