Re: Git shows nothing in cmd.exe

[Adam Dinwoodie <adam@dinwoodie.org>]

On Tue, 10 Nov 2020 at 12:19, KAVALAGIOS Panagiotis (EEAS-EXT)  wrote:
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Cygwin <cygwin-bounces@cygwin.com> On Behalf Of Adam
> > Dinwoodie
> > Sent: 10 November 2020 13:04
> > Subject: Re: Git shows nothing in cmd.exe
> >
> > On Tue, 10 Nov 2020 at 10:35, KAVALAGIOS Panagiotis (EEAS-EXT) wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > I would like to report an issue with git. The following command:
> > >
> > > $ git branch -a
> > > * master
> > >   remotes/origin/master
> > >
> > > works fine under Cygwin terminal, but it displays nothing under
> > > cmd.exe. We are using
> > >
> > > git version 2.21.0
> > >
> > > and
> > >
> > > CYGWIN_NT-10.0 XXX 3.1.4(0.340/5/3) 2020-02-19 08:49 x86_64 Cygwin
> > >
> > > The "set CYGWIN=disable_pcon" in the cmd.exe didn't help.
> >
> > Can you please provide the output from running `where.exe git` in a cmd.exe
> > session, as well as the diagnostics requested in the problem reporting
> > guidelines below?
>
> Sure, the command shows the following:
>
> C:\>where.exe git
> C:\Program Files\Cygwin\bin\git.exe
> C:\Program Files\Git\cmd\git.exe
>
> Of course the Git for Windows installed is not affected by that issue. It works also fine under cmd.exe.
>
> > > Problem reports:      https://cygwin.com/problems.html
> >
> > Given that, we'll be able to help work out what's going wrong for you.
>
> I apologise for forgetting that. I have included it in my present e-mail.
>
> > For what it's worth, having just checked, running Cygwin Git from a cmd.exe
> > shell works as expected for me.
>
> OK, thanks. It's good to know that Adam. So it is possibly something in our configuration or BLODA.

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.