git w/ git-svn on Windows Vista December 30. 2008

I currently try out git because of its ability to do full version control without access to the server (like when in traveller mode).

While on Gentoo Linux it's quite easy to get it working, on my laptop's Windows Vista installation with cygwin, I've encountered problems that could yet only be worked around in a bad manner.


First, there are several blog entries out there that explain how to get git on Windows with cygwin, so I won't covert that. Actually, I got git running on itself, but in subversion client mode (that is: running git as an svn client), I encountered problems.

When doing an initial git svn clone -s git-server directory the checkout first runs for long time and then aborts when it tries to call git repack, also when calling it "by hand":
Alex@mobile ~/git/xp.public/trunk
$ git repack
Nothing new to pack.
/usr/sbin/git-core//git-repack: line 139: /usr/sbin/git-core/git-update-server-info: Permission denied

Since file permissions look good, I should actually be able to execute that file. However, in Windows Explorer, you can see that you need administrator privileges to execute it:

View in the Explorer


These little icons indicate that you need admin privs to run it, and you can elevate yourself to administator mode, when running through the Explorer, but - of course - out of the cygwin environment, running that program does not really work.

As workaround, you can completely disable Windows User Access Control, but this is discouraged. So, currently, I'm stuck here and will try to continue to resolve this as I really need git mainly on my Windows laptop...

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Alex Kieselin Vista   Tuesday, December 30. 2008 @ 13:44
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git under Windows Vista
There's an update for the problem described here. As already suspected, Windows Vista applies some heuristics to mark files, so users need to elevate to administrator to be able to execute those programs. However, the "heuristics" that are app
Weblog: blog://alexkiesel.de
Tracked: Mar 06, 22:44

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I have this same problem - for now I run the Cygwin Bash shell as administrator and that solves the problem.
#1 Jeff on 2009-04-09 18:00 (Reply)

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