Updating your SDK - git-for-windows/git GitHub Wiki

Installing the SDK

The Git for Windows SDK release is a self extracting and auto executing 7-zip archive that clones the latest version of files in Git for Windows SDK 64 repository using a temporary bundled git. For the 32 bit version it also performs a run time optimisation on cloned DLLs (rebase).

This was previously called the 'net installer', see below. It provides everything required to bootstrap a development environment, even if no git is available (or an unstable one is being worked on).

It is also possible to manually extract the archive and then run ./setup-git-sdk.bat in the MSYS2 terminal window.

Alternatively, you can also clone your own copy of the 64 bit SDK with git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/git-for-windows/git-sdk-64 (or ...-32 for 32-bit)... (select depth to taste) (See #816). The repository contains exes and DLLS so you should run the rebase script for the 32 bit version.

The SDK contains core parts of MSYS2 Runtime, MinGW, 'pacman' and 'gnupg' packages, carefully selected to keep the size small yet still allowing use of the 'pacman' package manager to initialize a full-fledged MSYS2 environment plus Git for Windows' packages.

Updating the installed SDK

The SDK ships with the script update-via-pacman.bat that you can:

Make sure that all Git SDK Bash windows are closed first, i.e. that no processes are running that might lock files that want to be updated
Start a cmd window
Run update-via-pacman.bat in the command window (it will always re-install the mingw-w64-git-extra package at the end)
Review/log the changes located in /var/log/pacman.log.

While 'double-clicking' the file in the explorer will work, the cmd window will auto-close on completion limiting you options for reviewing the updates. Thus start a cmd window and run the .bat file from there.

Alternatively:

To keep the SDK up-to-date, periodically run

pacman -Syu
# If core-packages are updated by this you are promted
# to restart MSYS2 without exiting back to the shell.
# Follow these instructions and repeat:
pacman -Syu

Explanation

Core packages like the msys2-runtime, bash or pacman itself should be updated with the pacman -Syu command [was Xupdate-core script X]. Because those core packages are linked to the msys2-runtime (and each other), and updating the runtime "in flight" results most often in heap corruption as far as MSYS2 is concerned.

The old update-core script has been retired, see https://github.com/msys2/MSYS2-packages/issues/524

Alternative Method

An alternative method is to start git-cmd.exe from within the MSYS2 shell and run pacman -Sy --needed msys2-runtime && pacman -S --needed pacman bash. This ensures that no obsolete binary continues to be used after the update.

If All Else Fails

Occasionally, particularly if infrequently updated, you may find some blocking issue prevents update, e.g. some gpg key has 'expired'.

One option is a re-install, having saved your working repositories.

ensure any repositories you have worked on in usr/src/ are up to date (e.g. git fetch --all, or your preferred invocation).
rename the top level SDK (e.g. C:\git-sdk-64-Nov21\).
install the SDK afresh.
copy your old usr\src\git repo, and others you worked on (as per 1. above), across to the new usr\src\ location, having moved/renamed the SDK's copies out of the way.
you should now be able to hack on your git with the updated SDK.
at some later time, clean up the old copies.

Origin of 'net installer' concept

The idea for the 'net installer' originated in the Git for Windows project when it was still based on MSys 1.x. At that time, MSys 1.x did not have a package manager, therefore the original net installer (ab-)used Git as a package manager.

Since the new net installer no longer needs to ship with Git (instead using Pacman to install all the packages (including the mingw-w64-git package) that are current at the time the net installer is launched), its versions are no longer tightly coupled to the Git version.