Introduction

Hello.

I've installed git-annex and git-annex assistant on Windows 7 in a corp environment (hello gotchas!).

In this post I'll describe issues I encountered, how I fixed them, recommendations I have for the installer, and some results from a couple git annex test runs.

Background

My regular domain user doesn't have permissions to write to C:\Program Files (x86), so I use a secondary domain user which is in the Administrators group. I use "Run as different user" to run installers, etc. (cf. "Run as Administrator")

During msysgit installation I checked "only bash, don't add to path, don't integrate with Explorer" etc, since I like my third-party applications isolated.

The installer

Where to install git-annex.exe

The nightly build of git-annex/assistant from NEST (20140908) only prompts for the base path of the msysgit location and it installs files in $BASE/bin and $BASE/cmd... I'll try manually copying files post-install to mitigate the path issues described in other posts on this forum.

The msysgit installer (1.9.4-preview20140815) presents a certain screen with three radio options:

1. git bash only
2. just git in cmd.exe
3. git + unix tools in cmd.exe.

I think this is the meaning of each:

1. cmd.exe's PATH is not touched.
2. $GITBASE/cmd is added to PATH
3. $GITBASE/bin is added to PATH

Therefore, I think that if you do something so that git-annex.exe is added to both $GITBASE/cmd and $GITBASE/bin (perhaps a symlink or even a .lnk file) then all three user preference options will be covered.

All I did was copy $BASE/cmd/git-annex.exe to $BASE/bin/git-annex.exe and now both git annex and git-annex work in my msysgit "git bash" console. I didn't test cmd.exe since I selected option 1 in the msysgit installer.

Installer locations: user profile or system-wide?

I found a shortcut for the webapp in Start Menu/Startup ... for the wrong user. Please prompt the user during the installation: "Install startup link system-wide or for current user?"

git annex test results

$HOME defaulted to some mapped drive, whoops!

The test suite has been running since before I started this post. Is that normal?

I notice that it emits "Detected a crippled filesystem", "Enabling direct mode." and other messages again and again. If those checks are expensive, maybe the result should be memoized/cached.

Oh goodness, the test is reading and writing to my "home directory": a remote filesystem I never use. It's slow. I'll have to configure msysgit to use a different, more local $HOME. This a common problem on this workstation. I'll let the test finish in case it reveals something useful to you, but this will not be how I use it going forward...

I am unable to attach testWithMappedDriveHomeDirConsoleOutput.txt to this post. 1 out of 84 tests failed. Here is the only case sensitive occurrence of FAIL in the console output, with some lines of context.

OK
    info:                                             Detected a filesystem without fifo support.
  Disabling ssh connection caching.
  Detected a crippled filesystem.
  Enabling direct mode.
git-annex: Data.BloomFilter.Util.suggestSizing: capacity too large to represent
FAIL
      Exception: user error (git-annex ["info","--json"] exited 1)
    version:                                          Detected a filesystem without fifo support.
  Disabling ssh connection caching.
  Detected a crippled filesystem.
  Enabling direct mode.
git-annex version: 5.20140908-g378fbb1
build flags: Assistant Webapp Webapp-secure Pairing Testsuite S3 WebDAV DNS Feeds Quvi TDFA CryptoHash

test results with local NTFS $HOME

...The console output is scrolling by much more quickly.

2 out of 84 tests failed.

    prop_past_sane:                                 OK
      +++ OK, passed 1000 tests.
    prop_duration_roundtrips:                       OK
      +++ OK, passed 1000 tests.
    prop_metadata_sane:                             OK
      +++ OK, passed 1000 tests.
    prop_metadata_serialize:                        OK
      +++ OK, passed 1000 tests.
    prop_branchView_legal:                          OK
      +++ OK, passed 1000 tests.
    prop_view_roundtrips:                           OK
      +++I nOiKt,  Tpeasstsse
d  1 0i0n0i tt:e sts.
    prop_viewedFile_rountrips:                      FAIL
      *** Failed! Falsifiable (after 51 tests and 1 shrink):
      "a:"
      Use --quickcheck-replay '50 592211036 1831676953' to reproduce.
  Unit Tests
    add sha1dup:                                    init test repo
  Detected a filesystem without fifo support.

  Disabling ssh connection caching.

and

OK
    info:                                             Detected a filesystem without fifo support.
  Disabling ssh connection caching.
  Detected a crippled filesystem.
  Enabling direct mode.
git-annex: Data.BloomFilter.Util.suggestSizing: capacity too large to represent
FAIL
      Exception: user error (git-annex ["info","--json"] exited 1)
    version:                                          Detected a filesystem without fifo support.
  Disabling ssh connection caching.
  Detected a crippled filesystem.
  Enabling direct mode.
git-annex version: 5.20140908-g378fbb1
build flags: Assistant Webapp Webapp-secure Pairing Testsuite S3 WebDAV DNS Feeds Quvi TDFA CryptoHash

...Note the corruption. I think this happens when I drag the scroll bar while console output is being emitted. (msysgit's problem?) I would presume and hope that this is a "display only" issue. UPDATE: see section Corruption below.

.vbs failure

I copied the git-annex.lnk out of my admin user's start menu onto my desktop and double clicked it. wscript.exe got stuck in a loop where new copies were being spawned over and over again (and old copies dieing at the same rate).

I think I know why. git-annex.exe isn't on the path... but git-annex.lnk is in the CWD (Desktop in this case). Yeah, that is the problem. The vbs attempts to run "git-annex webapp", and this .lnk points to a valid "executable": git-annex-webapp.vbs... So it just calls itself with an argument over and over again.

Workaround: invoke git annex webapp from the normal git bash console.

Corruption?

In some section above I speculated that the "jittery" corruption I was seeing in my console was a "display only" problem caused by scrolling around while new characters were being printed to the console. Now, I don't think so.

The corruption can be seen in the Log in the webapp. Here's an example from the top of the log:

[2014-09-08 13:37:45 Central Daylight Time] main: starting assistant version 5.20140908-g378fbb1
Launching web browser on file://d:\annex\.git\annex\webapp.html
[2014-09-08 13:37:45 Central Daylight Time] Cronner: You should enable consistency checking to protect your data. 
(scanning...) [2014-09-08 13:37:45 Central Daylight Time] Watcher: Performing startup scan
(started...) rreerrcceevvcc::vv  ::ff  aaffiiaalliieellddee  dd((  NN((ooNN  ooee  rreerrrroorrrroo))rr

))

I have no clue about this! (Well... "I think it's trying to communicate!")

Conclusion

I hope this information is helpful. I've enabled the 'email comments to me' option on this post and I'd be happy to perform further tests upon request.

Cheers!