From: Felipe Contreras Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2009 08:21:14 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] user-manual: Simplify the user configuration. Message-ID: <94a0d4530901240021u65adeff8pb6995ef707bc1f68@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <83wscndv57.fsf@kalahari.s2.org> On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 8:59 PM, Hannu Koivisto wrote: > Felipe Contreras writes: > >> On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 6:17 PM, Hannu Koivisto wrote: >>> Felipe Contreras 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. . Isn't that enough argument to stop assuming the user knows where is the "home directory"? -- Felipe Contreras