My Git installation always refers to the wrong directory. Why?

Question

I installed and re-installed Git on my Windows8 machine multiple times. It\'s a long story as to why I did that. Once I installed it at C:\\Git and now I

Answer 1

This is linked to the value of the environment variable HOME.

• make sure you don't have one defined in your windows session.
• use the git-cmd.bat which comes with your msysgit (obsolete since early 2015)
  use the git-cmd.exe which comes with your git-for-windows:
  it will set HOME to the right value, and will be able to look for/ or create %HOME%/.ssh and other config files which reside in %HOME% directory.

With the old msysgit, that git-cmd.bat contains:

@if not exist "%HOME%" @set HOME=%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%
@if not exist "%HOME%" @set HOME=%USERPROFILE%

With the new git-for-windows, the git.exe is build with:

--cd-to-home"; WorkingDir: %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%

In both cases, HOME is set to, by default, %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%.