I'm going to start off by saying that I'm not particularly good with either git or Windows. However, I've been successfully using msysgit on Windows 7 for a while now, keeping track of a number of different repositories using the Git GUI.
For some reason, though, when I try to navigate to any of the directories that have my repositories and run git status
from PowerShell, I get the following error:
fatal: Not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git
I'm not exactly sure why this is happening, as I can cd
to this directory:
C:\Users\wilduck\Model\.git
However, I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the fact that my %HOME% environment variable is set to C:\Users\wilduck\
. My thought that this is the problem is supported by the fact that if I perform the following commands:
mkdir C:\Users\wilduck\stupidtest
cd C:\Users\wilduck\stupidtest
git init
A git repository is initialized in C:\Users\wilduck
, not in the stupidtest
subdirectory.
So, my problem is that, while I can work in a few different repositories using the Git GUI, I cannot access those repositories from PowerShell. I've thought about re-installing msysgit, as I'm not sure which option I chose for "How would you like to run git from the command line", but I have no idea if that will affect my ability to get at my existing repositories. I've also thought about changing my %HOME% environment variable each time that I want to work in a different repository but that is both a pain, and screws with the .gitconfig settings.
My basic question can be easily written as How do I get git, from PowerShell, to recognize my existing repositories? However, I have a number of related questions that I would love some explanation for:
- Why does this work fine with Git GUI, but not with powershell? Is there some magic going on behind the scenes?
- Is this an artifact of how windows environment variables work? Or how git handles a home directory?
- Did I, at any point, screw something up terribly?