I've got Git for Windows setup (msysgit) and it was working fine for the last few days and today I've encountered an odd error.
When issuing a Git command in the Windows Command Prompt or in the Git Bash that comes bundled with msysgit, I get a strange '(END)' line appear and then I cannot issue any other comamnds.
At this point all I get are system beeps.
Any ideas?
Thanks, P.
Git want to show more than one screen of information to you, to do so it call the standard unix pager program less. Just type q to return to the prompt when you no longer want to navigate in the output.
j move one line down
k move one line up
<space> move one page down
b move one page up
h show the help
If you want to use git efficiently you should learn the basic unix tools. Even if git build and run on windows it's pretty much an alien software on the platform.
If you don't want less just replace it with another pager in the configuration. If you don't want a pager at all just use cat :
git config --global --add core.pager cat
Press q to exit the pager (which is less in git by default).
I first came across this question when I was looking for the same thing; to not have to exit out of the log command. I have since found the answer I like, so even though it is well after the original asking I will add this answer to provide an additional solution that I didn't find quickly in my own search.
Others have stated why the (END) is present -- the results are being piped thru a pager, one that can be configured for a different pager.
However, I sometimes don't want it to stop at all; because I've specified other options that do the limiting. I found that for this git has a global option --no-pager to turn off the whatever pager is defined in the config file.
This global option is on the git command itself, is available for all subcommands and is placed before the subcommand like this:
git --no-pager log
Git is using the "pager" called less, which allows you to scroll through large amount of program output easily. However, the default settings on Git for Windows seem to be to keep the pager running even when there is less than one screen of output.
Here is the default setting I had before, which would always show the (END) and wait for you to hit q before returning you to your prompt:
$ git config --get core.pager
less -+F
You can change the behavior so that less will only keep running (and take control of the keyboard) when there is more than a screenful of output by changing the option to -F instead of -+F.
Fix the pesky pager with
$ git config --global core.pager "less -F"
(The -+X option syntax for less is documented to reset the -X option to its "default", although that is not the behavior I observed with -+F since removing the option altogether was equivalent to -F, not -+F.)
Related
This question already has answers here:
Git branch command behaves like 'less'
(9 answers)
Closed 11 months ago.
I'm a little confused with the following behavior of git commands in the Windows Command prompt.
This shows a result comparable to VIM (I think) with interactive list
git branch -a
Result is something like the following and I've no idea what key-combinations to use to scroll through the output (I did notice that q ends the output).
But this shows a "normal" result by just dumping the output to stdout
git show-ref --tags --heads
which is what I prefer:
How to make all output be just dumped to stdout?
I'd prefer if all commands work the same way. Esp if I want to automate a git command in a batch script or something, I cannot use some kind of interactive shell.
I noticed that this behavior seems to be caused by the TERM=msys environment variable setting, which, if absent, behaves the same. I don't know if there's a different setting I can use.
In the end, while the colored result may be fun, I can get that by using Git BASH. But when I run the commands directly from the Windows Command, I'd expect them all to just echo the output to stdout.
I can't remember that this was the behavior previously, so my guess is that I installed something that f'ed things up ;). I'm on Windows 10 for this machine, git, bash etc are latest.
This is what git calls a pager. You can disable it for a particular command with:
git --no-pager branch -a
(Note that --no-pager goes between git and the subcommand, because it is a global switch).
If you want to configure your system so you don't have to remember that, from man git-config:
pager.<cmd>
If the value is boolean, turns on or off pagination of the output of a particular Git subcommand when writing to a tty. Otherwise, turns on pagination for the subcommand using the pager specified by the value of pager.<cmd>. If --paginate or --no-pager is specified on the command line, it takes precedence over this option. To disable pagination for all commands, set core.pager or GIT_PAGER to cat.
That is, you can disable the pager for git-branch only with git config --global pager.branch false, for example.
And if you want to disable it for all commands do git config --global core.pager cat. Or you can try to set the environment variable GIT_PAGER=cat, of course.
I often find myself appending --help|less to commands that I am crafting a command in a shell to explore the CLI of the program I am using. What ways are there to accomplish the same thing with fewer key-presses?
For instance, if I wanted to use the new way of switching branches (I don't, I'm stuck in my ways happily doing git checkout -b other_branch) then my history (and thought process) could look like
git change other_branch # Guess what the command should be
git --help|less # Backtrack to where I am confident I know the command and ask for help
git switch --help|less # Gradually build up the command from there
git switch other_branch
For context:
I typically want the pager either to be able to search or because I am working in tmux and activating scrolling takes a few additional, and awkward, key-presses.
I typically use zsh on Ubuntu or Debian.
I typically use arrow up to iterate on my previous command.
Add the following to your .zshrc file:
# Alt-H: Open `man` page of current command.
unalias run-help
autoload -Uz run-help{,-{git,ip,openssl,p4,sudo,svk,svn}}
Then restart your shell.
Now, whenever you're in the middle of typing a command, you can press AltH (^[h) to immediately open the man page for that command. Then, after you quit your pager, Zsh will will automatically restore your command line, so you can finish typing.
I assume that it's because of the color setting in my config file, but I've tried changing that to no avail. Maybe I'm not doing that right?
Notice that Git Bash shows branch color in green, but on window cl it's not showing at all!
$ git branch
* add_bower *<~~~ only the asterisk appears on the windows prompt.*
master
git in cmd should work just fine. I would check both your gitconfig local and gitconfig global before giving up here.
the first thing I would do is a
git branch --color
or
git diff --color
you can also use the -c option
git -c color.ui=always status
if you see colors then what is likely happening is your local gitconfig is overriding the setting in your global gitconfig
at that point do a
git config --local --edit
if things say auto or true and you still don't see colors. set the output to always. I recommend this b\c it is possible for git to make mistakes and not treat cmd as a terminal
from git-config:
If this is set to always, git-diff(1), git-log(1), and git-show(1)
will use color for all patches. If it is set to true or auto, those
commands will only use color when output is to the terminal. Defaults
to false.
like so
[color]
branch = always
diff = always
interactive = always
status = always
ui = always
hope this helps!
I don't think the command prompt will support coloring different parts of the output out of the box. You'd probably need some extension or add-on to handle it. Have you considered using Powershell? In addition to the built-in support for the coloring you're looking for, it's also much more versatile and powerful than the normal command prompt.
I'm seeing the exact same problem, only for some command prompts. (By default it works, but when I run my team's "razzle" customization script the output is broken like your screenshot. Oddly, coloring in git log and status works fine; just branch is broken.)
I created a new shortcut that launched the same customization script, and the output is fixed for my new shortcut. Very weird.
If you run git branch --no-color you see the right output, just without color?
You can run git config --local --add color.branch never to set that as the default for this repo.
I'm using Github and Git bash on my Windows PC (running XP).
On Ubuuntu I'm happyily using git grep to plough through my code, but every time I call something like:
git grep "some text in my repo"
on Windows I get the results and afterwards I'm stuck with the bash window showing all kind of things [END], ~, [RETURN]... whenever I try to enter something.
Question:
What else besides CTRL+R, CTRL+Q, FN+END, Q, ESC can I try to not having to force-close and reopen git:bash in order to continue to work.
Thanks!
EDIT:
This is what I mean:
As soon as I start typing, the [END] string re-appears (or 50 lines ~) and I cannot write any command on Git, because whatever is in the way swallows half of what I'm typing.... nice description...
I was wondering about this also after installing git and running git bash. It seems "git grep" pipes commands through "less".
Solution: Just type q.
Is git launching less (or something similar) so up/down arrows on your keyboard scrolls through the matches? If you don't want that, try the instructions from https://stackoverflow.com/a/12166923/972216:
set GIT_PAGER=cat
Would disable it for your console session once, or
git config --global core.pager cat
to disable it for your account.
Whenever I execute git log command it cannot be terminated. If I do Ctrl + C it exits paging environment but if I start to type anything it starts git log command again.
as mentioned already, git log -X will limit your output to the last X commits.
Git log and other git commands invoke the less command. This is the pager. To get help with the pager, type ? or h when looking at the output. You will now see the help for the less command. Quitting less is easy, just type q.
If you don't want log to use a pager utility, you can instruct git not to use it with:
git --no-pager log
Git log has a lot of options. To get a quick overview of what has happened, I use
git log --graph --oneline --decorate --all
Decorate can be set to be enabled by default through config so you don't have to issue it.
If you think that's a lot to write on the command line, you're right! Bash has a quick remedy for that: CTRL-R. Press that and start typing 'graph'. You should get the last time that you typed that long command. This is one reason I don't bother with git aliases; it's easy to search your command history which persists from session to session.
Further, you can limit the output of git log to a particular author or particular date range, etc.
Have fun exploring and stick to the command line. It's what git was meant to be used on. You will also be introduced to a lot of excellent bash techniques that will help you a ton as you get going further with git.
You can limit the number of commits to be shown with:
git log -n 10
To limit only to the last 10 commits.
You can use also some kind of graphic interface for git, like gitk or tig or git-cola.
Check for other gui clients here.