In troubleshooting issues using Cygwin within GitHub runners, one specific problem scenario identified is when the Cygwin "git" package is installed. When that happens, Cygwin's Git installation ends up being executed instead of GitHub's installation of Git, which obviously doesn't have the same setup, configuration, etc. as GitHub's own internal install of Git.
Usually, these issues can be avoided by simply not including the "git" package among the list of packages to be installed along with Cygwin [1], but it appears there are certain cases where Cygwin's "git" package is being pulled in as a dependency by other Cygwin packages. In particular, "gettext-devel" [2] (source package "gettext") is listing an explicit dependency on Git, and I am unclear why. At least on the surface, GNU Gettext itself does not appear to have any such dependencies [3], and while the packages don't map one-to-one, Debian packages don't appear to have such a dependency, either [4]. In reviewing the gettext.cygport file [5], "git" is explicitly listed as a DEPEND (though I do see that use of DEPEND is deprecated [6]) and then again as a PKG_REQUIRES [7] of gettext-devel [8]. It seems this listed dependency on git is a result of this manual specification and not Cygport's auto-detection of package dependencies. Is this explicit listing of "git" as a dependency of "gettext-devel" necessary? Can it be removed? Thank you, Matthew [1] https://github.com/marketplace/actions/install-cygwin-action [2] https://cygwin.com/packages/summary/gettext-devel.html [3] https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/ [4] https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=gettext&searchon=names&suite=stable§ion=all [5] https://cygwin.com/cgit/cygwin-packages/gettext/tree/gettext.cygport#n88 [6] https://cygwin.github.io/cygport/check_funcs_cygpart.html#BUILD_REQUIRES [7] - https://cygwin.github.io/cygport/pkg_pkg_cygpart.html#REQUIRES - https://cygwin.github.io/cygport/pkg_pkg_cygpart.html#PKG_REQUIRES [8] https://cygwin.com/cgit/cygwin-packages/gettext/tree/gettext.cygport#n220
