msysgit32 insists on launching from HOMEDRIVE/HOMEPATH

Question

Even if I set the HOME environment variable explicitly, git bash insists in launching with default folder HOMEDRIVE/HOMEPATH which is a network folder.

Is there a way to override this behavior?

Answer 1

I just checked with git version 2.47.1.windows.1.

My shortcut still has %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH% in the 'Start in' field:

And yet, when it executes "C:\Program Files\Git\git-bash.exe" --cd-to-home, the pwd is my %HOME% folder, not %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%

Git 2.48 (Q1 2025), pre-2.48-rc1 confirms the default value for %HOME%.

See commit 8525e92 (09 Dec 2024) by Alejandro Barreto (alejandro5042).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 930f2b4, 19 Dec 2024)}

8525e92886:Document HOME environment variable

^{Signed-off-by: Alejandro Barreto
Signed-off-by: M Hickford}

Git documentation refers to $HOME and $XDG_CONFIG_HOME often, but does not specify how or where these values come from on Windows where neither is set by default.
The new documentation reflects the behavior of setup_windows_environment() in compat/mingw.c.

git now includes in its man page:

HOME

Specifies the path to the user's home directory.

On Windows, if unset, Git will set a process environment variable equal to:

• $HOMEDRIVE$HOMEPATH if both $HOMEDRIVE and $HOMEPATH exist;
• otherwise $USERPROFILE if $USERPROFILE exists.

But since, in my case, I have set the HOME environment variable explicitly, I can confirm the 2024 version of Git does respect it.

Answer 2

Figured it out

The issue was with the shortcut to Git Bash - "start in folder" set to %HOMEDRIVE%...