Does anyone know what the git bash program for windows uses for its shell?

Question

Sorry if this is the wrong place to be posting but I am using the git bash program for windows downloaded from github.

It pretty much functions the same as a linux / mac terminal and I was wondering if there was any software out there that does the same thing?

The problem is that I can only have one git bash window open, if there is a way to open more than 1 instance of git bash, that would be great too!

Thanks a lot,

Martin

Solution 1

Github for Windows uses a Windows port of GNU bash which is provided by the MSYS project which is, in turn, a part of the MinGW project. As Andrew pointed out, this piece of software is really a part of Git for Windows which Github for Windows includes and uses internally.

So you can get bash for Windows outside of Github for Windows by installing MSYS.

Note though that Git for Windows is based on a modified msys.dll which received substantial amount of changes not included upstream. I'm not sure if this constitutes a user-noticeable change but "stock" bash might therefore differ in behaviour from that you're using inside Github for Windows.

Also note that this port of bash hasn't been taught to properly deal with non-ASCII characters. Hence even though Git for Windows is full Unicode since 1.7.10, bash doesn't know about this and I'm not sure it ever will.

Solution 2

It uses Git for Windows, a packing containing MSys/MinGW and git. You can get multiple tabs using a wrapper like console.

Solution 3

Both on Windows 7 and 8 you can shift+left-click the Git icon, in the launchbar or the magical search box, to open another instance.

Alternatively, you can just double-click the shortcut or sh.exe in Git/bin/.

Note: Includes improvement from Fergie and botimer.

Solution 4

Here is an article about "Replacing default git bash console with Console2" that'll help you.

View more solutions