Re: git gui can't find /usr/share ??

[Eric Blake <ebb9 at byu dot net>]

Michael Kairys <kairys <at> comcast.net> writes:

> 
> Trying to learn more about git by installing it and poking around... If I 
> try to run git gui I get:
> 
> bitmap "c:\cygwin\usr\share\git-gui\lib/git-gui.ico" not defined
>     while executing
> "wm iconbitmap . -default $oguilib/git-gui.ico"
>     invoked from within
> "if {[is_Windows]} {
>  wm iconbitmap . -default $oguilib/git-gui.ico
> }"
>     (file "D:\Local\Cygwin\bin\git-gui" line 524)
> 
> As indicated by the last line my Cygwin installation is not in C:\Cygwin but 
> rather D:\Local\Cygwin. I have read what getting-started documentation I 
> could find but I have not found a way to tell git-gui not to look in 
> C:\Cygwin.

Bummer.  This is most likely an artifact of cygwin's tcl implementation being a 
native windows program that doesn't always understand cygwin paths properly.  
It looks like the git build process tries to compensate for the brain-damaged 
path handling in cygwin's tcl by setting $oguilib to the hard-coded native 
Windows path of the build machine (ie. my computer's location, in 
c:\cygwin\usr\share) that corresponds to the desired destination cygwin path 
(ie. /usr/share, regardless of where that is mounted for whatever user is 
installing it), rather than sticking to posix paths.  This works great when 
building and installing git yourself, but falls apart when building it for the 
cygwin distribution.

I personally haven't used git-gui, and am not that fluent in tcl, so I'm not 
sure whether I will be able to come up with a patch.  But I'll add it to my 
todo list.  In the meantime, you may be better off raising this issue on the 
git list, to get a faster response from the actual git-gui maintainer.  I also 
wonder if gitk will fall apart in the same manner, since it is another tcl-
based git program.

However, most of git is not tcl based, so hopefully this doesn't stop you from 
learning other parts of git.  Also, you can try installing the 'tig' package 
for browsing git history without the need for tcl.

-- 
Eric Blake
volunteer cygwin git package maintainer



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