Re: [msysGit] Re: [PATCH] Add a Windows-specific fallback to getenv("HOME");

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Jun 4, 2014, 15:56 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.1.00.1406041749590.14982@s15462909.onlinehome-server.info>
In-Reply-To: <20140604154503.GB22681@camelia.ucw.cz>

Hi Stepan,

On Wed, 4 Jun 2014, Stepan Kasal wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> > > On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 5:14 PM, Johannes Schindelin
> > > <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> > > > No. Git is not always called through Bash or the git-wrapper,
> > > > unfortunately.
> 
> but you have to admit, that in most cases it is called through bash or
> the git wrapper.

It would seem so. But the plan was always to make the user experience on Windows less abysmal than now (I just do not have enough time these days to pursue that goal myself), which includes the goal to make git.exe the main entrance point, not Bash nor the git-wrapper.

Show 6 quoted lines

> > The problem arises whenever git.exe calls subprocesses. You can pollute
> > the environment by setting HOME, I do not recall the details, but I
> > remember that we had to be very careful *not* to do that, hence the patch.
> > Sorry, has been a long time.
> 
> Yeah, memories.

*Very* vague. Sorry.

> Is this experience still valid?  How many users do profit from this,
> using c:/Program\ Files \(86\)/bin/git.exe instead of c:/Program\ Files
> \(86\)/cmd/git.exe, either by pure luck or intentionally?

Keep in mind that the most problems were introduced by the fact that USERPROFILE disagrees with HOMEDRIVE\HOMEPATH at times.

> It seems that we should keep the patch, to minimize surprise if
> bin/git.exe is used directly.

I am also in favor of keeping the patch because it introduces a bit of documentation. It says pretty precisely what it wants and allows platform-specific handling without having to play games with the environment, as was suggested earlier.

And of course you cannot deny that it had four years of testing. The HOME problems never came back after we included this patch.

> But we should probably make it consistent with other places:
> - $HOMEDRIVE$HOMEPATH (without the slash)
> - $USERPROFILE if the above dir does not exist.
> - setenv HOME instead of wrapper

Possibly. But again, it is hard to argue with four years of testing. Any change you make now will lack that kind of vetting.

> We can make this change for msysGit 2.0.0 only, so that we do not
> break 1.9.4 ;-)

So we can break 2.0.0! ;-)

Actually, 2.0.0 for Windows needs to wait a little longer (it is a little bit unfortunate that we could not coordinate it with upstream) because the plan is to switch to mingwGitDevEnv for said release. No more msysGit. Like, bu-bye. Thanks for all the fish.

Ciao, Dscho