#What is git bash on windows windows#
On Windows you might run commands like ipconfig /all or format G: using cmd.exe. It's package that contains bash (which is a command-line shell) and a collection of other, separate *nix utilities like ssh, scp, cat, find and others (which you run using the shell), compiled for Windows, and a new command-line interface terminal window called mintty. You are correct, Git Bash for Windows is not just bash compiled for Windows.
(I think a good answer would help someone understand, in broad strokes, how these components fit together and understand the right words for the components, but I don't want to break the SO question / answer format.) It seems that the Bash application is actually a specially curated bundle of other things (mostly listed above) that are available independently.įundamentally, I would like to know what is the basis that makes *nix commands like ssh, scp, cat, and ls work in Git Bash for Windows? But, then I saw in the FAQ that mintty is the the default terminal for Git Bash. In looking into "What is Git Bash" I read about Cygwin and a different thing called msys2, which seems to be related to msysGit, and I saw references to MinGW. I'm calling it Git Bash for Windows, which seems reasonable. I realized that I'm not even sure of the name of the Bash program, because it's just bundled with the git-scm download. Yesterday I ran into a problem with rsync, and I started digging deeper into Git Bash for Windows. There is a page with more information here.
I have happily been using Git and Git Bash from.