Re: GIT_ASKPASS absolute path detection bug on Windows

["András Kucsma" <andras.kucsma@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Mar 22, 2020 at 7:07 PM Torsten Bögershausen <tboegi@web.de> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 22, 2020 at 04:59:15PM +0000, brian m. carlson wrote:
> > This function (locate_in_PATH) specifically says it is not to be used on
> > Windows because it doesn't work properly there due to file extensions.
>
> My reading is, that it dows work if you specify "foo.exe", "foo.bat".
> And when you specify "foo" it may use "foo.exe", but there may be
> a shell script called "foo".
> But I may be wrong.

Other than the extension appending, I believe the other difference is
that on native Windows the PATH separator is ';' (semi-colon). In
cygwin and mingw, PATH is translated to use ':' (colon).

>
> > I'm pretty sure a proper solution would involve touching that as well,
> > although your solution does indeed fix the issue you reported.  That
> > function also uses a colon-separated PATH, which I'm not sure will work
> > in all cases on Windows (although maybe it will).
> >
> > From looking at this earlier, I think the problem here is that we're
> > trying to use the Unix codepaths (on Cygwin) and then expecting those to
> > handle Windows-style paths, which they aren't intended to do.  This is
> > likely one of many problems on Cygwin.
>
> Yes and no.
> C:/MyTool.BAT is a valid Windows file name even under Windows.
> Cygwin preferres /cygdrive/cMyTool.BAT
> Git under Cygwin should handle C:/MyTool.BAT correctly, and to my
> understanding it does.
>

Indeed, the Cygwin shell tools recognize C:/Users style and even
C:\\Users style paths as well.


Looking at the code a bit more, I feel like git is only supposed to
work within a Unix compatibility layer (like Cygwin or Mingw shell) on
Windows. Beside the PATH and directory separator characters, the code
makes other Unix like assumptions, for example that /bin/sh (a.k.a.
SHELL_PATH), or /dev/null exists. If native Windows support is a goal,
I'm happy to help a bit to improve the situation, but I wouldn't want
to swim against the current. Note that other than this GIT_ASKPASS
related edge case, cygwin built git has been working in this
environment for me.