Visual Studio Code and GitHub for Windows

If you have GitHub for Windows / GitHub Desktop installed and install Visual Studio Code, you may receive the error 'it looks like git is not installed on your system' when clicking on the Git icon. This is most likely because the path to the git executable git.exe isn't in your system path.

Locate the git executable

The first step is finding the path to folder that contains git.exe.

GitHub for Windows installs to C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Local\GitHub which can be shortened to %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\GitHub. Within this folder is a sub-folder starting PortableGit.... such as PortableGit_c7e0cbde92ba565cb218a521411d0e854079a28c. 

You can use a shortened name for this folder such as portab~1. To find this shortened name, navigate to the GitHub folder in the command prompt and run:

for /d %I in (*) do @echo %~sI

You might have to hunt around for the git.exe file in this folder. At one point I found it in a bin sub-folder but this appears to have changed recently to mingw32\bin (GitHub for Windows version 3.0.11).

My final path ended up being:
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\GitHub\portab~2\mingw32\bin

Add to the system path

1. Go to System Properties by opening the run dialog (Windows key + R) and opening 'control sysdm.cpl'
2. Change to the Advanced tab and click on Environment Variables
3. In the System variables section, click on Path and click Edit
4. At the end of the value text add a semicolon and the path to the git executable
5. Click OK, OK and OK to close System Properties

Restart Visual Studio Code and Git integration should now work.