git sees the system profile as home instead of the user home folder (Windows 7)

Question

I am new to git and am following this bitbucket tutorial for initial setup. In the git bash window, it shows me as brnt@brntslaptop, but if I enter:

$ ls -a ~/.ssh
ls: /c/windows/system32/config/systemprofile/.ssh: No such file or directory.

I assume it has something to do with me being an administrator or having UAC disabled, but am not sure of the best way to proceed.

This answer is similar- but I don't think it is a good idea to redirect from the system folder to a user folder, especially if another user has the same issue. Other similar answers seem to do a symlink or similar for a solution. But I haven't found one that involved the system profile.

I also considered changing the shortcut properties "Start In:" from %HOME% to %USERPROFILE%, but ~ still seems to resolve to %HOME%

Is this behavior normal? What is the proper way to make "~" or %HOME% resolve to my user directory?

Answer 1

Just change %HOME% (or actually $HOME, as %HOME% most likely is not set at all).
By default <git-install-dir>\etc\profile sets $HOME to %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH% if they are set and point to an existing directory, or to %USERPROFILE% otherwise.

So, you could edit that file, locate the line

HOME="$HOMEDRIVE$HOMEPATH"

and remove it or add an # in front of it to force %USERPROFILE% to be used instead.

Alternatively add a line anywhere after this block explicitly setting HOME to what you want it to be.

EDIT:
In newer versions of git that line may no longer be present. I have added the following at the very top of my etc\profile (it is very specific and ugly, but it works):

#homefix start
HOME=/c/Users/myusername/
HISTFILE=$HOME/.bash_history
export LANG=en_US
# normalize HOME to unix path
export HOME="$(cd "$HOME" ; pwd)"
#homefix end

The export LANG... line can be ignored. I have it there to get english text in menus and buttons in git gui and gitk, because IMO to translate git commands adds no value, only confusion.