Cygwin: git 2.33.0: gitk not showing diffs from index

Question

I have been using Cygwin git for a long time (since about 2012). Much better than msysgit, as bash and all utilities are identical to what runs on linux, which is where I deploy. I have lots of scripts that run on both platforms, and files are moved between the two using git - I hardly ever use sftp. I use gitk heavily when composing commit messages, so seeing the diffs between the index and HEAD is pretty important to me.

Anyway, I just got a new Windows 10 PC, and installed Cygwin on it. git seemed to be working fine, until I made some changes and added the files to the index. Running git status shows the new and modified files correctly. Then when I run gitk, the main window shows "Local changes to be committed" above the master branch, as usual. And when I select "Local changes to be committed", then down in the lower right corner the Comments window for Patch shows the pathnames for each of the new or modified files in the index. All good. But the lower left window, showing the line diffs for each file is empty after the boilerplate lines:

Author:   
Committer:   
Parent: c7d3fb6f37a88e6d00c56517e466661fd0a7bd57 (Bugs in pbUser: we no longer use names_by_email or passwds_by_email arrays...)
Branch: 
Follows: 
Precedes: 

    Local changes checked in to index but not committed

And clicking a pathname in the lower right window does not show the diffs for that file. But running git diff --cached shows the correct output.

I looked a little at the changes announced in Cygwin-announce Digest, Vol 21, Issue 3, and see that Version 2.33.1-1 of Git includes changes to gitk. but I can't trudge through the sources to try to guess what might have caused this - it clearly can't be a documented "feature". Anyone else having this problem, or have a clue about it? I can't imagine how it can be user error, but it so often turns out that way, I have to wonder...

Answer 1

Well, I guess it wasn't user error, but rather a bug that slipped out. Rereading my question, I realized that I said Cygwin-announce Digest, Vol 21, Issue 3 reported changes to gitk in git 2.33.1-1, but I was complaining about git 2.33.0. So I just went back to Cygwin's setup-x86_64.exe and installed the pending updates, which included git 2.33.1-1 (it also lists gitk 2.33.1-1). Now gitk works correctly, as it always did!

This is great, but leads to a new issue, in that git --version still reports 2.33.0. Given that it isn't practical to install Cygwin correctly and maintain it without using the installer, I guess that's not really worth complaining about...