Portable GfW no longer runs from network drive

[cfbrobak]

• I was not able to find an open or closed issue matching what I'm seeing

Setup

• Which version of Git for Windows are you using? Is it 32-bit or 64-bit?

PortableGit-2.20.1-64-bit.7z.exe

• Which version of Windows are you running? Vista, 7, 8, 10? Is it 32-bit or 64-bit?

$ cmd.exe /c ver

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]

• What options did you set as part of the installation? Or did you choose the
  defaults?

Portable GfW unpacked in directory "H:\DevTools\pgm\Git-2.20.1" by running the .exe file.
H: is a mapped network drive.

• Any other interesting things about your environment that might be related
  to the issue you're seeing?

Version 2.18.0 is also installed in the same way (directory "H:\DevTools\pgm\Git-2.18.0") and runs without problems.

Details

• Which terminal/shell are you running Git from? e.g Bash/CMD/PowerShell/other

PowerShell or cmd.exe

• What commands did you run to trigger this issue? If you can provide a
  Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example
  this will help us understand the issue.

- Executing "H:\DevTools\pgm\Git-2.20.1\git-bash.exe" does nothing and returns nothing.
- Executing "H:\DevTools\pgm\Git-2.20.1\cmd\git.exe" returns "Invalid executable path:".

[PhilipOakley]

This sounds like a symptom of another 'corner case' problem that's recently been reported for some files on network devices (#1989), Maybe.

[dscho]

This sounds like a symptom of another 'corner case' problem that's recently been reported for some files on network devices (#1989), Maybe.

I am not quite sure that it is the same issue. It sounds more related to recent changes in git-wrapper.c...

[dscho]

A new snapshot is available that should fix this issue. Could I ask y'all to please test?

[cfbrobak]

I just tried this snapshot: PortableGit-prerelease-2.20.1.windows.1.27.g9f16cdd421-64-bit.7z.exe
Unfortunately, the problem still seems to be there.

[dscho]

@cfbrobak thanks for testing. However, I just unpacked that portable Git into D:\test-git\portable-2.20.1-cmd-fix and then ran this:

PS C:\Users\me> & '\\localhost\d$\test-git\portable-2.20.1-cmd-fix\cmd\git.exe' version
git version 2.20.1.windows.1.27.g9f16cdd421

So it works here. If it fails on your side, could you try the same as I did? And if that works, provide a bit more detail what else you did? Like, details about your particular setup, e.g. is this a Samba drive or something more obscure?

[cfbrobak]

The problem is only seen if Portable GfW is unpacked on a network drive, not when unpacked on a local drive as in your own test.
My H: drive is mapped to a share on a large (27 TB) NTFS filesystem provided by some NAS box.
Normally, I do not use the UNC path when running Git but use the drive letter instead.
A test like yours outputs (actual share path is removed):

PS C:\> & '\\<share>\DevTools\Git-2.20.1-x64\cmd\git.exe' version
Invalid executable path:
PS C:\> & '\\<share>\DevTools\Git-2.18.0-x64\cmd\git.exe' version
git version 2.18.0.windows.1

As you can see version 2.18.0 works, as have all(?) previous versions.
I should add that the 2.20.1 version actually is the snapshot, not the released version.

[dscho]

Sorry, I just tried on a network drive that is on a different continent, and it still worked:

PS C:\Users\me> \\us-east2\users\me\portable-20190129\cmd\git version
git version 2.20.1.windows.1.27.g9f16cdd421

The same happens when I map a Samba directory from an Ubuntu VM:

PS C:\Users\me> Z:\portable-20190129\cmd\git version
git version 2.20.1.windows.1.27.g9f16cdd421

This all makes me think that it is actually very important to know more about your setup, or maybe there is a chance that you can run some custom-built code in a debugger? You would have to install Git for Windows' SDK for that. Alternatively, I would need to have interactive access to the setup (we could Live Share so you can verify that I do not do anything untoward with your system). If none of that is an option, there is unfortunately nothing I can do to help.

[cfbrobak]

Unfortunately, I am unable to do any of the things that you suggest, the reason being that this is a computer at my job.
What I did do was to install a number of previous Portable GfW versions. It turns out the problem was introduced after version 2.19.2, that is, version 2.19.2 works and 2.20.0 does not work. I don't know if that is of any help.
Anyway, thanks for looking into this issue.

[dscho]

Sorry, those are too many obstacles for me to help.