Package management

Modern software development relies heavily on a way to manage dependencies, i.e. to keep track of required software libraries and their versions. Examples are apt-get for Linux, homebrew for MacOSX, Maven for Java and pip for Python.

Git for Windows is based on MSys2 which bundles Arch Linux' Pacman tool for dependency management.

How to use pacman

There is a man page for pacman and the tool also sports a --help option. These resources are recommended to address questions not covered by the following, brief descriptions.

Install/upgrade packages

To install a package, run

pacman -S <package-name>

To ensure that the newest package version is installed, it is recommended to pass the -y option, too, which asks Pacman to download the newest package list:

pacman -Sy <package-name>

Remove packages

pacman -R <package-name>

List packages

To list the installed packages, call

pacman -Q

To list the contents of a package, call

pacman -Ql <package-name>

Technical details

Rebuild packages

To build MinGW packages, you need to start the appropriate MinGW shell (32-bit or 64-bit – this sets MSYSTEM=MINGW32 or MSYSTEM=MINGW64 respectively), clone the MINGW-packages repository (recommended location: /usr/src/MINGW-packages), cd to the appropriate subdirectory and call

makepkg-mingw -s

(The -s flag tells makepkg that it should install dependencies automatically as needed)

To build MSys packages, you need to start the MSys shell (which sets MSYSTEM=MSYS before running the Bash), clone the MSYS2-packages repository (recommended location: /usr/src/MSYS2-packages), cd to the appropriate subdirectory and call

makepkg -s

To rebuild the msys2-runtime (i.e. msys-2.0.dll), you will need to have a second MSys2 installation and quit all applications from the first MSys2 installation. In the second installation, as above, start the MSys shell and clone MSYS2-packages to /usr/src/.

Inside the msys2-runtime subdirectory, you need to use makepkg -s for the initial build.

For subsequent builds, after modifying the source files in src/msys2-runtime/winsup/cygwin/ you can switch to src/build-<arch>-pc-msys/<arch>-pc-msys/winsup/cygwin and type make. This will generate an msys0.dll file in the latter directory that you can then copy to the first MSys2 installation to test.

The process to rebuild the Bash is very similar to the msys2-runtime one; You will just need to work in the src/bash-<version>/ subdirectory of /usr/src/MSYS2-packages/bash/ (both the sources and the generated bash.exe live there).

Repository structure

TBD

Bintray

TBD

How to upload new versions (Git for Windows core developers only)

TODO: explain how to use repo-add