Cygwin git compatibility with VS Code (or other Windows programs) using cygpath

README.md

Cygwin Git + VS Code compatibility

Thanks and credit to mattn and ferreus on GitHub.

Also check out Developing on WSL and/or wslpath (Windows 10 Build 17046 or later) if you're using the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

cygpath-git-editor.sh

#!/bin/bash

# wrapper to convert linux paths to windows
# so vscode will work as a git editor with cygwin
# editor="/home/this/file.sh" in .gitconfig

# extract last argument (the file path)
for last; do true; done

# get all the initial command arguments
all="${@:1:$(($#-1))}"

# launch editor with windows path
code $all $(cygpath -w $last)

cygpath-git-vscode.bat

@echo off

REM wrapper to convert linux paths to windows
REM so vscode git integration will work with cygwin
REM "git.path"="C:\\this\\file.bat" in settings.json

setlocal
set PATH=C:\cygwin\bin;%PATH%

if "%1" equ "rev-parse" goto rev_parse
git %*
goto :eof
:rev_parse
for /f %%1 in ('git %*') do cygpath -w %%1

I tried the bat wrapper, it worked for basic git status display, but trying to stage/unstage a file resulted in errors.

I.e. either of these commands issued by VS Code failed:
Stage: git add -A -- C:\project\hxcalc\package.json
Unstage: git reset -q HEAD -- C:\project\hxcalc\package.json
Both of them result result in fatal: C:\project\hxcalc\package.json: 'C:\project\hxcalc\package.json' is outside repository at '/mnt/c/project/hxcalc'

I tried the same commands in Cygwin bash, and indeed, Cygwin git doesn't seem to be able to handle Windows paths.

What worked for me is this: github.com/nukata/cyg-git. It's a tiny C wrapper that you compile with gcc (for my use case, regular Cygwin gcc worked), and a Zsh wrapper script that works similar to cygpath-git-vscode.bat, but it also takes care of converting paths passed to git. I had to make a small change to this script to make it handle rev-parse commands that produce multiple lines of output (made a PR to the original repo).