Can I get the locate to work on Windows through Git Bash?

Question

Git Bash seems to have nice support of various Linux commands. It even supports locate, though it never finds anything:

mypc@mypc MINGW64 ~
$ locate --regex .*?\/[^\/]+\.docx

I tried to update the locate database, but the support is not finished there:

mypc@mypc MINGW64 ~
$ updatedb
/usr/bin/updatedb: line 323: /usr/var/locatedb.n: No such file or directory
Failed to generate /usr/var/locatedb.n

Can I fix that by editing some script? What causes this problem?

Answer 1

from git bash run:

mkdir /c/Program\ Files/Git/usr/var; updatedb --localpaths='/c/'

Also you can add the following alias in your ~/.bash_profile:

alias updatedb="updatedb --localpaths='/c/'"

I havent tried the alias out yet bit I don't see why it would work.

Just make sure to either

source ~/.bash_profile

or open a new shell after you have added the alias so it gets loaded.

Answer 2

Thanks for the tip! Just wanted to add to @danielpflood's answer, that I needed to run "Git Bash" as administrator, to be able to create the needed /var/ directory. This is on Windows 10.

[wanted to add as a comment, but I do not have enough reputation for that.]