Git GUI splash dialogue allows you to select recent repos, create, clone and open repositories.
I'm trying to help another engineer get started with Git GUI and after installing Git GUI version 1.9.4 or 1.9.5 we can't see the splash dialogue.
Instead Git GUI is going straight to an unwanted old repository set by his predecessor.
How can I change this behavior? I tried uninstalling the app several times and no luck. this setting seems to be persistent from somewhere maybe the registry.
After getting some clues from one of the posts the command line was returning fatal: Not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git and there was no GIT_DIR either.
I decided to look into the Git GUI icon shortcut then I saw that the shortcut was set to %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH% and this was an old folder with a repository.
I changed the Start in to c:\ and now I see the splash dialogue allowing me to navigate between repos or create and clone.
I don't know why uninstalling Git GUI did not reset "Start in" but now I have it behaving as all the other Git installs.
git-gui looks at your current working directory and the GIT_DIR evironment variable to see if you are 'in' a git enabled directory tree. If you finding it opening some surprise repository you probably need to unset GIT_DIR. That variable should not normally be set.
If GIT_DIR is not set then it runs git rev-parse --git-dir. If that does not raise an error then git-gui shows the repository picker. The following line does the equivalent to git-gui lines 1253+ and if this returns a directory you should expect git-gui to open that repository.
C:\src>git rev-parse --git-dir && git rev-parse --show-prefix
fatal: Not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git
No .git directory, shows repository picker.
C:\src\git-gui>git rev-parse --git-dir && git rev-parse --show-prefix
.git
Finds a .git directory, opens the repository.
