git when in unix, git.exe when in wsl

git

#!/bin/sh

if pwd | grep /mnt/c > /dev/null; then
    exec git.exe "$@"
else
    exec /usr/bin/git "$@"
fi

Instead of if pwd | grep /mnt/c, you could use something like

if [[ "$(pwd -P)/" =~ ^/mnt/./ ]]; then

This avoids the need for grep for matching, and the use of pwd -P means that symlinks from your linux filesystem to the windows filesystem still get run under git.exe.

[frank@GODMODE Source]$ pwd
/home/frank/Source
[frank@GODMODE Source]$ pwd -P
/mnt/c/Users/kageu/Source

@kageurufu your syntax would require Bash or another Shell that supports [[ ]] and =~. The fastest way in POSIX should be the following:

#!/bin/sh
case "$(pwd -P)" in
    /mnt/?/*) exec /mnt/c/Program\ Files/Git/cmd/git.exe "$@" ;;
    *) exec /usr/bin/git "$@" ;;
esac

A Bash solution with a regular expression would look as follows:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
if [[ "$(pwd -P)" =~ ^/mnt/./ ]]
    then exec /mnt/c/Program\ Files/Git/cmd/git.exe "$@"
    else exec /usr/bin/git "$@"
fi

YES!!
THANK YOU!

I'm not thát familiar with linux, but where do we put this script?

From the reddit post you should: 'Add this script to your "/usr/local/bin" directory and name it "git"'

Thanks - this works except for one issue!

When trying to pull / commit to private repos I get

ERROR: Repository not found.
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights

I thought it was issues with my ssh key at first, but removing the git.exe config above, cloning and pulling the repo works fine (with the same ssh key) except it is just incredibly slow.

Anyone had any similar issues?

With this change, VS code stopped recognizing the git folder (if under WSL). The reason is perhaps that git rev-parse --show-toplevel still points to the folder in normal Windows format, e.g. returns D:/Programming/.... instead of /mnt/d/Programming/.... Any ideas to fix this?

Thanks - this works except for one issue!

When trying to pull / commit to private repos I get

ERROR: Repository not found.
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights

I thought it was issues with my ssh key at first, but removing the git.exe config above, cloning and pulling the repo works fine (with the same ssh key) except it is just incredibly slow.

Anyone had any similar issues?

Are you able to git pull on Windows prompt?

Thanks - this works except for one issue!
When trying to pull / commit to private repos I get

ERROR: Repository not found.
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights

I thought it was issues with my ssh key at first, but removing the git.exe config above, cloning and pulling the repo works fine (with the same ssh key) except it is just incredibly slow.
Anyone had any similar issues?

Are you able to git pull on Windows prompt?

I had the same issue. The reason is because you're trying to use SSH to pull git, but since you are now using git.exe, it uses the SSH credentials stored at /mnt/c/Users/YOURNAME/.ssh instead of the ones at ~/.ssh. To fix this I just did ssh-keygen there and added that ssh key to my github account too.

Also I changed the script to

#!/bin/sh

if pwd | grep /mnt/c; then
    exec /mnt/c/"Program Files"/Git/cmd/git.exe "$@"
else
    exec /usr/bin/git "$@"
fi

to fix sudo git <command> not being able to find git.exe

Thanks - this works except for one issue!
When trying to pull / commit to private repos I get

ERROR: Repository not found.
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights

I thought it was issues with my ssh key at first, but removing the git.exe config above, cloning and pulling the repo works fine (with the same ssh key) except it is just incredibly slow.
Anyone had any similar issues?

Are you able to git pull on Windows prompt?

I had the same issue. The reason is because you're trying to use SSH to pull git, but since you are now using git.exe, it uses the SSH credentials stored at /mnt/c/Users/YOURNAME/.ssh instead of the ones at ~/.ssh. To fix this I just did ssh-keygen there and added that ssh key to my github account too.

Ahh, that makes sense! Thanks for that, I'll give it a try later

I had the same issue. The reason is because you're trying to use SSH to pull git, but since you are now using git.exe, it uses the SSH credentials stored at /mnt/c/Users/YOURNAME/.ssh instead of the ones at ~/.ssh. To fix this I just did ssh-keygen there and added that ssh key to my github account too.

You can do it a bit more easily; just cp -r ~/.ssh/ /mnt/c/Users/YOURNAME/ does the trick. Whether you choose to copy the known_hosts file over is up to you.

Has anyone had issues running this with bash-git-prompt?

I just got this working this morning, and love the speed it adds, however I do miss the git-prompt.

#!/bin/sh

if pwd | grep /mnt/c; then
exec /mnt/c/"Program Files"/Git/cmd/git.exe "$@"
else
exec /usr/bin/git "$@"
fi

Adding a wildcard to the if condition makes it work on any Windows volumes.

#!/bin/sh

if pwd | grep /mnt/*; then
    exec /mnt/c/"Program Files"/Git/cmd/git.exe "$@"
else
    exec /usr/bin/git "$@"
fi

#!/bin/sh
if pwd | grep /mnt/c; then
exec /mnt/c/"Program Files"/Git/cmd/git.exe "$@"
else
exec /usr/bin/git "$@"
fi

Adding a wildcard to the if condition makes it work on any Windows volumes.

#!/bin/sh

if pwd | grep /mnt/*; then
    exec /mnt/c/"Program Files"/Git/cmd/git.exe "$@"
else
    exec /usr/bin/git "$@"
fi

this solves well, but to use zsh, reading the branch on the continuous command line is slow. I think he is still using the Linux binary for reading.

➜ agenda git:(test) ✗

With this change, VS code stopped recognizing the git folder (if under WSL). The reason is perhaps that git rev-parse --show-toplevel still points to the folder in normal Windows format, e.g. returns D:/Programming/.... instead of /mnt/d/Programming/.... Any ideas to fix this?

Here is a version that works with visual code.
It transform the windows paths to wsl path with a sed ([A-E] being the name of the windows volumes you have, so you might have to adjust this.
(Well it transforms the first occurence of A: in /mnt/A in every git command, so it comes with some risk ^^, but I've never had a problem with it yet)

#!/bin/sh
  
GIT_WINDOWS="/mnt/c/Program Files/Git/cmd/git.exe"
GIT_LINUX="/usr/bin/git"

case "$(pwd -P)" in
  /mnt/?/*) exec "$GIT_WINDOWS" "$@" | sed "s#\([A-E]\):#/mnt/\L\1#" ;;
  *) exec "$GIT_LINUX" "$@" ;;
esac

Thanks @grandemk, works like a charm on VSCode !

However, in the terminal, sed is removing colors. Any idea how to keep the colors ?

It's not sed removing color but git not coloring the text because it's not being outputed directly to a terminal.
I think modifying the git command like this should solve it: "$GIT_WINDOWS" -c color.ui=always "$@".
(It might be a bit more complicated than that if some commands of git do not support the -c flag)

Note that what I propose is a big hack, you will most likely encounter a problem at some point with a A: becoming /mnt/A in the code you are diffing (especially in C++ with the A::method syntax.)

@grandemk Your versions were super helpful! With this tweak things seem to be happy thus far (after a short amount of play time):

GIT_WINDOWS="/mnt/c/Program Files/Git/cmd/git.exe"
GIT_LINUX="/usr/bin/git"

case "$(pwd -P)" in
/mnt/?/*)
  case "$@" in
  # Needed to fix prompt, but it breaks things like paging, colours, etc
  rev-parse*)
    # running linux git for rev-parse seems faster, even without translating paths
    exec "$GIT_LINUX" "$@"
    ;;
  *)
    exec "$GIT_WINDOWS" "$@"
    ;;
  esac
  ;;
*)
  exec "$GIT_LINUX" "$@"
  ;;
esac

Can anyone tell me which file should I modify to enable these changes? Thank you so much.

@sunguanxiong You can place the file with the name git e.g. into the directory /usr/local/bin so it's in your path and can be found by your shell.

@medeirosinacio I think this is the relevant file for oh-my-zsh.. It runs git like this: GIT_OPTIONAL_LOCKS=0 command git "$@" The problem is, I can't figure out what command does, but that's where I'm guessing the issue lies.

UPDATE: actually, I said that without trying it myself. Using @mdentremont's solution worked fine on my oh-my-zsh install.

First, thanks for all this. You've saved my relationship with zsh and wsl2... however, I did a little measurement and I'm thinking that all this is a bandaid on something that should be avoided.

I have a small firmware project (think a collection of C code that builds with make). If I build using Linux (WSL2 on ext4) then it takes about 26 seconds. The same build on in /mnt/c/path/to/code/on/c/drive takes around 1:30... roughly 3x slower. The same build under Windows build takes 40seconds. The build under Windows, pointing at the WSL2 disk (via \\wsl.localhost\Ubuntu\...) was so incredibly slow that I gave up waiting for it (after 10 minutes!)

The take-away here is that Linux stuff should only point at ext4 (or whatever) and Windows stuff should only look at NTFS. Mixing things is just creates a bunch of annoying problems to solve.

Happy that WSL exists but still waiting for it to be The Answer(tm)

@grandemk Your versions were super helpful! With this tweak things seem to be happy thus far (after a short amount of play time):

GIT_WINDOWS="/mnt/c/Program Files/Git/cmd/git.exe"
GIT_LINUX="/usr/bin/git"

case "$(pwd -P)" in
/mnt/?/*)
  case "$@" in
  # Needed to fix prompt, but it breaks things like paging, colours, etc
  rev-parse*)
    # running linux git for rev-parse seems faster, even without translating paths
    exec "$GIT_LINUX" "$@"
    ;;
  *)
    exec "$GIT_WINDOWS" "$@"
    ;;
  esac
  ;;
*)
  exec "$GIT_LINUX" "$@"
  ;;
esac

Hi! Can anyone help me - where exactly this code should go to? To which file? I'm totaly new to Linux/WSL2 and can't faind myself around it :(

It's really helpful in your bashrc file! Which is the file that loads all kinds of settings when bash is first initialized for any instance.

@roopjm thank you, I did, but it doesn't seem to work :(

Having this code in the Bash startup script is not going to be very useful, since you are only going to be able to use it if you are invoking git from within an interactive login shell. What you really want is to overload the git executable that is found in the PATH.

PATH works exactly the same way on Linux as it does on Windows. It contains a list of directories that is searched for executables whenever you enter the name of a program in your terminal. The default path on Linux is something like /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin. What you can see here is that /usr/local/bin is searched before /usr/bin, as such we can place stuff in there to overload other executables.

To know where your current git is installed use command -v git, which should give you /usr/bin/git. Meaning, we can use /usr/local/bin to overload it. So, let us do exactly that.

cat >/tmp/git <<'GIT'
#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -e
if [[ $(pwd -P) =~ ^/mnt/./ ]]
    then exec /mnt/c/Program\ Files/Git/cmd/git.exe "$@"
    else exec /usr/bin/git "$@"
fi
GIT
sudo install /tmp/git /usr/local/bin

That is all, no matter from where you invoke git it will be using your overloaded version going forward. Whenever you really want to us the original just use /usr/bin/git.

You can do exactly the same with many other programs that read things from disk. For instance https://github.com/sharkdp/bat is really awesome, and available cross-platform. Just brew install bat on Linux and choco install bat on Windows and create an overload with exactly the same logic as in the git overload (obviously replacing the paths to the executables), and enjoy a massive speed up.

Just use it as an alias. I use fish, I added:

alias git "git.exe"