Configure Visual Studio to use system-installed Git.exe

Question

Visual Studio 2017 ships with its own version of Git. Unfortunately, it doesn't have support for SSH and it doesn't include a root certificate for the issuer for SSL certificate protecting our repositories. So, whenever we try to clone, pull, or push, we get this error:

Error encountered while cloning the remote repository: Git failed with a fatal error. fatal: unable to access 'https://********/': SSL certificate problem: unable to get local issuer certificate

It looks like Visual Studio 2017 ships with its own version of Git. The latest version of Git, 2.12.2, fixes the issue above by adding support for looking in the Windows Certificate stores when validating SSL certificates. Is there anyway to configure Visual Studio to use the globally installed version of Git? Bonus points if the solution works across versions of Visual Studio.

Answer 1

This may be a little bit late but just in case others come looking for this information and end up here, you can tell Visual Studio 2017/2019 to use the system installed version of Git by doing the following:

1. Open up Visual Studio, click on the Tools menu item at the top.
2. Select Options at the bottom of the list.
3. In the search box for Visual Studio options search for Git
4. Under the External Web Tools section, find the two entries that contain: $(DevEnDir)\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TeamFoundation\Team Explorer\Git\cmd $(DevEnDir)\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TeamFoundation\Team Explorer\Git\mingw32\bin

Please note this screenshot was found on google because I don't have my computer on me for actual screenshots. So it may appear a bit different.

5. Replace these with the location of your system installed version of git.

   Example of step five would be something like:

   C:\Program Files\Git\bin

   C:\Program Files\Git\mingw64\bin

6. Finally, you will need to completely close down Visual Studio. I would recommend an actual restart just to play it safe because sometimes it doesn't see those changes even after re-opening Visual Studio.

Answer 2

The Visual Studio installed Git version was causing issues on my side too, so I've replaced the entire folder where Visual Studio deploys its own version:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Professional\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TeamFoundation\Team Explorer\Git\

With the last 32-bits version downloaded from here. And after restarting the IDE the issues has gone, an option to change this from Visual Studio settings would be welcome, but at least this workaround works.

Visual Studio 2019 and above

The newer versions of Visual Studio uses directly the Git client installed on Windows, you can update it easily from command prompt using the following instructions.

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