TortoiseGit - git not found

Question

I'm using TortoiseGit with msysGit installed with the msysGit-fullinstall-1.6.4-preview20090729.exe and it works in a very strange way:

• on the About windows it says it can't find git, even if all the operations seems to complete ok
• on the Settings window, General tab, MSysGit section, the version is blank even with the correct path set (....\msysGit\bin)
• on the Settings window, Git\Config tab, any attempt to alter and save the settings lead to some stange text-less error, and the only way to close the window is by `Cancel' button
• on every operation it seems to look for git.exe on all the folders in path, which is at least strange, given that it knows exactly where to find the executable

The first three points are not present if I install msysGit with the Git-1.6.4-preview20090730.exe, even if the path is set the same in both cases (....\msysGit\cmd)

What can I do to make TortoiseGit recognise git installation from the msysGit-fullinstall-1.6.4-preview20090729.exe?

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Environment:

• Git-1.6.4-preview20090730.exe
• msysGit-fullinstall-1.6.4-preview20090729.exe
• TortoiseGit 1.0.2.0 32bit

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EDIT:

I don't want to put msysGit\bin in path, just msysGit\cmd.

If I simply replace the files from msysGit-fullinstall-1.6.4-preview20090729.exe with the files from an Git-1.6.4-preview20090730.exe installation, then TortoiseGit seems to recognize the git version and allows me to edit the Git\Config section in the settings. This is at least strange, given that the rest of the environment is not modified at all.

As soon as I restore the msysGit-fullinstall-1.6.4-preview20090729.exe files, TortoiseGit cease to function properly.

Answer 1

This might be obvious, but it's not clear from your post. Do you have msysgit\bin in your system path?

Also, this isn't quite answering your question, but I've found that TortoiseGit lacks polish. I prefer using Git Extensions.

Answer 2

It seems that bash prompt from msysGit-fullinstall-1.6.4-preview20090729.exe also adds msysGit\mingw\bin to path, so in order to use TortoiseGit and/or Git Extensions I have copied all the files from msysGit\mingw\bin to msysGit\bin and set the location to git.exe in both tools.

Answer 3

I've had nothing but problems with TortoiseGit.

However, discovering the following enabled me to give up sooner:

In your Path (in Control Panel->System->Advanced Settings->Environment Settings), add a path that contains git.exe (msysgit\bin or msysgit\git? TortoiseGit's instructions sure the hell don't tell me, so how should I know). Then open a command prompt and try running git.exe. It'll probably complain that it can't find libcurl-4.dll. So, you'll find that this dll file exists in msysgit\mingw\bin. Add this directory to your Path (or copy the dll if you prefer).

Now, the setup in TortoiseGit will finally appear to work. Clicking the "Check Now" button will actually tell you the version of git you're using instead of mysteriously going blank or popping up a useless error window.

When you try using TortoiseGit now, you'll get a blank progress bar that does nothing and you can't close it. Congratulations! Now you can give up and delete this garbage until someone cares enough to prepare it for human consumption. (can you tell I'm fed up with this software?)

Answer 4

Well, since my post, I actually got TortoiseGit working on one of my two systems. Adding the msysgit\mingw\bin directory to the path (so that git.exe could find libcurl-4.dll and thus not cause everything to silently fail) was the final key. I was able to do it using the default TortoisePlink.exe and didn't have to set GIT_SSH or anything like that. I could say it was easy (in retrospect, it's easy enough..) but in truth it took about two coding sessions that I would have preferred to spend more productively.

Answer 5

While this question is still hot... some nice people contributed lots of bugfixes to all three projects, so this is what I did to get TortoiseGit on Win7x64, previously failing on all combinations:

1. install mSysGit (network installer) into C:\msysgit, it will download the source and compile it leaving you in a bash git prompt. Stable version: msysGit-netinstall-1.7.2.3-preview20100911.exe 13 sep
2. install Git “preview” into C:\Program Files (x86)\Git, choose OpenSSH for ssh link Stable version: Git-1.7.2.3-preview20100911.exe 13 sep
3. install tortoisegit into C:\Program Files\TortoiseGit, (x64 version) and configure it’s settings specifying the git path (C:\msysgit\bin) and menu integration. Stable version: TortoiseGit-1.5.6.0-64bit.msi 25 sep

This setup picked up my existing git repos made on WinXP x86 with older versions of the packages, and seems fairly stable and fully functional.