"Check daily for Git for Windows updates" has no effect

[joe-landsman]

Existing issues matching what you're seeing

• I was not able to find an open or closed issue matching what I'm seeing

Git for Windows version

git version 2.50.1.windows.1
cpu: x86_64
built from commit: 4d32d83913170b86f9753fca10e75cdb2223d1cc
sizeof-long: 4
sizeof-size_t: 8
shell-path: D:/git-sdk-64/usr/bin/sh
feature: fsmonitor--daemon
libcurl: 8.14.1
OpenSSL: OpenSSL 3.2.4 11 Feb 2025
zlib: 1.3.1
SHA-1: SHA1_DC
SHA-256: SHA256_BLK

Windows version

Windows 10

Windows CPU architecture

x86_64 (64-bit)

Additional Windows version information

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19045.5965]

Options set during installation

Editor Option: VIM                                                                                                      Custom Editor Path:                                                                                                     Default Branch Option: main                                                                                             Path Option: BashOnly                                                                                                   SSH Option: OpenSSH                                                                                                     Tortoise Option: false                                                                                                  CURL Option: WinSSL                                                                                                     CRLF Option: CRLFAlways                                                                                                 Bash Terminal Option: MinTTY                                                                                            Git Pull Behavior Option: Merge                                                                                         Use Credential Manager: Enabled                                                                                         Performance Tweaks FSCache: Enabled                                                                                     Enable Symlinks: Disabled                                                                                               Enable FSMonitor: Disabled

Other interesting things

No response

Terminal/shell

Git Bash

Commands that trigger the issue

Run installer (not as administrator).  Check "Check daily for Git for Windows updates".

Expected behaviour

Daily checking for Git for Windows updates

If running the installer as administrator is required to enable the feature: A prompt for elevation

If there was some problem enabling daily checking: An error message

Actual behaviour

No daily checking for updates, no prompt for elevation, no error message

No scheduled task: schtasks /query | findstr /i git gives no output.

I do not have administrator access to the system so cannot test with "Run as administrator".

This problem is not new--I have had it for multiple years now. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling.

Thank you for taking my bug report.

Repository

No response

[dscho]

Run installer (not as administrator)

That's not really a supported scenario in Git for Windows. I actually meant to prevent this from working at all, but apparently I bungled that.

[joe-landsman]

Ah, OK. Thanks for explaining. Git for Windows has worked great for me as a non-administrator installation other than the daily update check. I hope you could continue to allow it even if it is unsupported. Perhaps instead of preventing it from working there could be a warning message? Or installer features that require administrator access disabled?

In my organization, installing software as administrator requires an IT support request that usually has a long turnaround time. Worse, since apparently every Git for Windows version upgrade runs the installer, I think every upgrade would require a support request, which would make it impractical to keep up to date. I'd guess there are Git for Windows users who are in similar situations.

[dscho]

You can make your own luck, you know? You could work on making this a supported scenario, and help supporting it in the future.