How to add more to Git Bash on Windows

Git for Windows is bundled with "Git Bash" terminal which is incredibly handy for unix-like commands on a windows machine. It is missing a few standard linux utilities, but it is easy to add ones that have a windows binary available.

The basic idea is that C:\Program Files\Git\mingw64\ is your / directory according to Git Bash (note: depending on how you installed it, the directory might be different. from the start menu, right click on the Git Bash icon and open file location. It might be something like C:\Users\name\AppData\Local\Programs\Git, the mingw64 in this directory is your root). If you go to that directory, you will find the typical linux root folder structure (bin, etc, lib and so on). If you are missing a utility, such as wget, track down a binary for windows and copy the files to the corrisponding directories. Sometimes the windows binary have funny prefixes, so you should rename the exe file to the standard name. Since bin is on the PATH, it will be automatically available to Git Bash.

Here are some to add:

wget

• Download the lastest wget binary for windows from https://eternallybored.org/misc/wget/ (they are available as a zip with documentation, or just an exe)
• If you downloaded the zip, extract all (if windows built in zip utility gives an error, use 7-zip).
• Move wget.exe to C:\Program Files\Git\mingw64\bin\

make

• Go to ezwinports, https://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/
• Download make-4.1-2-without-guile-w32-bin.zip (get the version without guile)
• Extract zip
• Copy the contents to C:\Program Files\Git\mingw64\ merging the folders, but do NOT overwrite/replace any exisiting files.