Failed to clone nvm repo. Installation on Cygwin Bash

[Lamera]

Operating system and version: Windows 11 22H2 (Cygwin)

How did you install nvm?

Tried to install it in a cygwin bash shell.

What steps did you perform?

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.3/install.sh | bash

What happened?

  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 15916  100 15916    0     0   244k      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--  246k
=> Downloading nvm from git to '/home/joel/.nvm'
=> Cloning into '/home/joel/.nvm'...
fatal: cannot copy 'C:/Program Files/Git/mingw64/share/git-core/templates/description' to 'C:/home/joel/.nvm/.git/description': Permission denied
Failed to clone nvm repo. Please report this!

What did you expect to happen?

That the correct windows filepaths are getting used on cygwin.

[ljharb]

fatal: cannot copy 'C:/Program Files/Git/mingw64/share/git-core/templates/description' to 'C:/home/joel/.nvm/.git/description': Permission denied

indicates a permissions error. NVM_DIR by default installs in $HOME/.nvm, which is the location it's trying to install from.

[Lamera]

@ljharb The problem is that C:/home/joel/.nvm/ doesn't exist. In cygwin the $HOME is pointing to /home/username. The C: is unnecessary and wrong here.

[ljharb]

aha, thanks. That's strange then. How is git installed?

[Lamera]

winget install --id=Git.Git -e --accept-source-agreements --scope machine

[ljharb]

I'm not familiar with winget but is there any chance the issue is caused by that git installation, considering the C: first appears in git, and not in the path nvm's install script sends to git?

[bohdantrotsenko]

My attempts to install nvm were also failing (albeit with a different error) as my git was installed by winget.

Installing git within cygwin (so that which git points to /usr/bin/git) solved the problem.

I suggest to close this issue with advise to install git to cygwin.

[ljharb]

It’d be ideal if the install script could detect that scenario tho.