command-line GIT for windows that mimics *nix commands?

sneakyimp

Anybody have a git-on-windows success story?

I need a git client on my windows workstation. I would like to continue working from the command line rather than using a GUI for the most part (but am curious about any added functionality the Windows GIT GUI might offer. I would ideally like to be able to run *nix commands on the windows machine. I find the different windows commands (dir instead of ls, backslashes instead of slashes, etc) and the CMD window to be really awkard when it comes to resizing and cut-and-paste and stuff. I also want to avoid Torgoise GIT primarily to avoid any daemons or services running to detect changed files in order to update my Windows Explorer windows and secondarily because also because its integration into the context menus on my windows machine apparently would conflict with an install of Tortoise SVN.

I've never used CygWin or anything like that but really dig the idea of a CLI window that lets me interface with my windows machine using my beloved *nix commands (ls, grep, mkdir, etc.).

Can anyone suggest a tool or combination of tools that might work for me here? I'm not really sure what components are included in msysGit (apparently the official git client for windows? but also 'separate from git itself' according to this page). I also don't know the difference between msysGit and 'GitHub for Windows' which is apparently available here. The getting started link also mentions Powershell?

This page mentions CygWin but opts instead for msysGit and ends up using Git Bash but I'm not sure how similar Git Bash might be to *nix-style commands or how much it might inherit from the Windows CLI.

Any war stories or whatever would be much appreciated.

Derokorian

I use msysGit( which is actually what GitHub for Windows uses as well; its a GUI wrapper for the command line tool). I've not found anything different when using git in windows vs mac or linux.

sneakyimp

So do you navigate your windows directory structure from CLI? If so, perhaps you could show me a sample command? I'm kinda hoping I don't have to type backslashes instead of slashes, etc.

Derokorian

I use powershell, but either msysGit or something else I have gave me *nix style commands...

Actual history of my current shell below:

PS C:\repositories\Rainmeter-Skins> history

  Id CommandLine
  -- -----------
   1 cd C:/repositories/derokorian.com
   2 git status
   3 git add app/*
   4 git add dero/*
   5 git add .\test                    <-- this was tab completion, hence the other slash
   6 ls
   7 git commit -m 'Code refactoring to keep it dry'
   8 git push
   9 cd ../
  10 ls
  11 cd ./Rainmeter-Skins
  12 git status
  13 history

NogDog

I'm currently using Git for Windows, which runs on top of MinGW, which gives you a linux-like command line.

Of course, you could just create a Linux VM on your Windows computer, ssh into it, and do it with "real" Linux. 🙂

Bonesnap

I've been successfully using the git bash/CLI from the official git website. You can do commands like ls, though since my knowledge of commands on systems other than Windows is very limited, I haven't tried to use others. When I need to use git I simply right-click on my repository's folder and choose "Git bash here" and it opens the CLI with the present working directory at that folder. I can navigate folders and drives relatively easily as well.

dalecosp

NogDog;11045539 wrote:
I'm currently using Git for Windows, which runs on top of MinGW, which gives you a linux-like command line.

Of course, you could just create a Linux VM on your Windows computer, ssh into it, and do it with "real" Linux. 🙂

I like that idea; plus, if you can share the Windows folders on the network, you can mount (-t msdos, -t ntfs) them and play with them from the Linux box as native files....

sneakyimp

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

OK I just downloaded git for Windows (msysgit) and installed it. It's a quick install and I see the context menu options. A quick Git Bash when right-clicking in windows explorer in a particular window opens the MINGW32 window in which the commands seem to behave more or less identically to linux (at least so far) is looking pretty good to me. As far as I can see so far on a cursory inspection, there are no extra services or resource-consuming startup processes installed, which is cool.