Windows installation comments

On Windows, git installs itself along with its own compilation of a minGW that doesn't say its name (it also used to be called msygit, but apparently now only developer should call it msysgit, nevermind). It does not mingle with the windows console if you don't want to though.

Git provides you with a console containing all the unix command line tools and a perl interpreter. The functions are not the same as the ones available to the windows prompt (a.k.a cmd).

Most probably all the commands that you need to know are :

• ls : list the content of a directory
• cd dirName: change current directory to dirName
• rm filename: delete a file
• mkdir: create a directory
• as many git commands as you can remember ;-)
• gitk : launches the default graphical interface.

At installation time, the installer asks you whether you want to :

• Choose which way to handle end of lines: I advise you to use checkout windows style and commit unix style. This is the most cross platform way of doing things.

• Choose to export to the global path:

  • None the git executable and tools, only have them available
  • only the git executable, no tools
  • All tools If you don't use cygwin, and would like to have access to the unix tools even from within cmd because you are missing them so much: go for the full fledge export. Otherwise, or if you don't use the console usually on windows, don't bother and export just the executable. Your IDEs will be able to use it.