I have successfully installed and configured msysGit Portable on my flash drive, and have used it to pull and push GitHub repos. However, I seem to always have to kludge the
The command used to launch git bash is:
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\cmd.exe /c ""C:\Prog\Git\1.7.1\bin\sh.exe" --login -i"
I just tried the following in a DOS session:
C:\>C:\Windows\SysWOW64\cmd.exe /c ""C:\Prog\Git\1.7.1\bin\sh.exe" --login -i"
VonC@XXX /c/
$ echo $HOME
/c/Users/VonC
By default, $HOME$%HOMEPATH%, but if I force %HOME%:
set HOME=/another/path
and then launch the same bash session:
C:\>C:\Windows\SysWOW64\cmd.exe /c ""C:\Prog\Git\1.7.1\bin\sh.exe" --login -i"
VonC@XXX /c/
$ echo $HOME
/another/path
So if you wrap the bash call by a script setting the HOME to:
%~dp0
: the path of the wrapper on your USB key%~d1\your\path
: with %~d1
being the drive letter (of your usb key if your wrapper is on it), you should be able to force HOME to whatever value you need.
Note (November 2011): since then, the OP dgw has written his own wrapper:
git-bash-portable.bat
:
@echo off
rem Copyright (C): 2010 Voyagerfan5761
rem http://technobabbl.es/
set USERPROFILE=%~dp0
set HOMEDRIVE=%~d0
set HOMEPATH=%~p0
set HOME=%~dp0
set HISTFILE=%USERPROFILE%.bash_history
rem set BASHRC=%USERPROFILE%.bashrc
git-bash.bat
The article "Portable Git for Windows: setting the $HOME environment variable to allow complete portability (including SSL keys and configuration for use with GitHub)" also add useful information.
However, if you install Git on a portable drive, you'll want your settings to travel with the installation—which obviously they won't if it is looking for them in a folder which may not exist on other computers.
So, what we need to do is tell Portable Git to treat a specific location within its own folder as the home folder; that way we can copy the whole Git folder anywhere we like and the settings will travel with it.
The solution with a git-bash-portable.bat
wrapper opens another Windows CMD window for me that stays in the background.
Another, more native solution is to adjust /etc/profile
and set the HOME var there. Just add the following lines to the end of /etc/profile
, myuser
beeing your virtual username:
# end of /etc/profile
export HOME="/home/myuser"
cd
This sets the proper HOME directory and cds into it. Then the startup mechanism, like loading all files from /etc/profile.d
works correctly and you just start git-bash.exe
with a doubleclick.
Of course you have to create your home directory for this to work. Start git-bash and create it:
mkdir -p /home/myuser
Regarding the agent, it usually has to be reloaded with every git-bash shell opened. A solution to get an independent agent spanning all git-bash windows is to include the following little script ~/.mgssh
in the startup. It stores the agent env vars in a file agent.env
in the .ssh
directory. Any new shell reads the file, checks if the agent is still running and connects to it. If it is not running it starts the agent and rewrites the agent.env
file. Make sure your .ssh
dir exists.
# cat ~/.mgssh
agentfile=~/.ssh/agent.env
agent_load_env()
{
test -f "$agentfile" && . "$agentfile" >| /dev/null;
}
agent_start()
{
(umask 077; ssh-agent >| "$agentfile")
. "$agentfile" >| /dev/null;
}
agent_load_env
# agent_run_state: 0=agent running w/ key; 1=agent w/o key; 2= agent not running
agent_run_state=$(ssh-add -l >| /dev/null 2>&1; echo $?)
if [ ! "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK" ] || [ $agent_run_state = 2 ]; then
agent_start
fi
# uncomment this, if you want to add a key on agent startup
#if [ "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK" ] && [ $agent_run_state = 1 ]; then
# ssh-add
#fi
unset agentfile
Now source the .mgssh
script in your .bashrc
:
# cat .bashrc
. ~/.mgssh
# ... more .bashrc content
Found this on GitHub:
https://help.github.com/articles/working-with-ssh-key-passphrases/#platform-windows
Usually, before you remove your usbstick you ask Windows to eject the stick, by right clicking it in the explorer or using the little systray icon. This will not work, if your agent is still up and running. Make sure to kill the agent before closing the last shell upon stick removal:
$ ssh-agent -k
unset SSH_AUTH_SOCK;
unset SSH_AGENT_PID;
echo Agent pid 8472 killed;
Remark: Usually you would use eval $(ssh-agent -k)
to unset the env vars as well, but as you do this just before closing the shell it's irrelevant. The above startup script .mgssh
takes care of cleaning up the ~/.ssh/agent.env
file so that does not have to be done either.