Discussion: Should we support /bin directory for backwards compability?

[nalla]

It was discovered in https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/SRCTREEWIN-3226 that e.g. Sourcetree is depending on git.exe being in a specific directory. The workaround in the linked issue is making that directory available again as symbolic link.

C:\Program Files\Git>mklink /D bin cmd
symbolic link created for bin <<===>> cmd

So is this something we should provide? Or is it something that 3rd parties have to deal with. The pro would be to support old scripts and maybe other 3rd parties that rely on git.exe is in the /bin directory.

The con would be to maintain that feature. I believe for the portable installation that would be a no go because of the FAT compatibility?

[shiftkey]

Tentative 👎 - I'd rather keep git-for-windows as simple as possible.

[dscho]

I think the biggest problem is that they used /bin/git.exe instead of /cmd/git.exe. An obvious mistake to make, of course, but a mistake nevertheless.

[nalla]

I think they used /bin/git.exe because msysgit shipped Git for Windows 1.x that way. Maybe we could create some sort of architecture description / program structure readme that ships with the Git for Windows SDK. Maybe outline the differences that were introduces with the switch from msysgit to Git for Windows SDK. That way 3rd parties can easily see the outline of the resulting installer. But I think that is something with very low priority.

[dscho]

Git for Windows 1.x contains that /cmd/ directory for quite a while now...

[nalla]

While that is true, I think their mistake was that they were depending on a folder structure that is SDK specific and not Git for Windows specific. While the /cmd folder survived the SDK change, /bin did not.

It should indeed be best practice to use the Git for Windows specific layout.