Git shows nothing in cmd.exe

[Brian Inglis]

On 2020-11-10 06:35, KAVALAGIOS Panagiotis (EEAS-EXT) wrote:
>> From: Cygwin <cygwin-bounces@cygwin.com> On Behalf Of Adam
>> Dinwoodie
>> Sent: 10 November 2020 13:57
>> Subject: Re: Git shows nothing in cmd.exe
>>
>> Thoughts below partly for my own reference, and partly in case anyone else
>> – including but not limited to Panos! – manages to take things further before
>> I do.
>>
>> I can't see anything obviously wrong here. There's two key oddities that
>> might be causing problems, though:
>>
>> - Cygwin is installed in `C:\Program Files\Cygwin`; that _should_ work, but it's
>> atypical, and spaces in filenames are a common source of problems.
>>
>> - This is a relatively old installation; I've not checked anything else, but Cygwin
>> Git v2.21.0-1 was released in May 2019 and there have been a bunch of
>> updates since then. I can't remember anything with these symptoms from
>> that time, however.
>>
>> I'm also curious about the Git configuration here, as I can see a bunch of ways
>> that could cause problems. I don't have the Cygwin bin directory in my path
>> to test this immediately, but for example `git branch -a` will try to call a pager
>> – `less` by default` – so I could imagine there being a PATH problem or similar
>> that's resulting in a duff pager call that's eating the output.
> 
> Adam, thank you very much! You found our issue. It is the "less" command from GnuWin32 that caused the problem:
> 
> C:\>where less
> C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32\bin\less.exe
> C:\Program Files\Cygwin\bin\less.exe
> 
> C:\>rename "C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32\bin\less.exe" less-OLD.exe
> 
> C:\>cd dev\Projects\TSSO_WKS\tsso-workstation-configuration
> 
> C:\DEV\Projects\TSSO_WKS\tsso-workstation-configuration>git branch -a
> * master
>   remotes/origin/master
> 
> It now displays correctly the branches.

Gnuwin32 *latest* package updates seem to be 10 years ago, some nearly 20.
Suggest deleting those and using current *mingw64*/msys Windows tools instead as
they are maintained with recent security fixes.
You should also be careful with PATHs using different toolchains: switch them
completely, or layer them carefully, to avoid these issues.

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

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