one final comment and then I promise we will never speak of this again. It is
possible that this is a Windows-specific issue. On Windows the format '%H
%ci' is not acceptable while the format "%H %ci" works correctly, [...]
That being said there are alternatives to using git from cmd.exe
that will make your life easier:
Use "Git Bash" (it ships with Git for Windows and provides a
proper shell environment like it is available on Linux. It makes
struggling with the limitations of the Windows command line
unnecessary and already contains a lot of helpful tools (like
'diff')
Use MSYS2 (as a matter of fact Git for Windows is based on /
compiled with MSYS2 and the "Git Bash" is basically an MSYS2
shell).
I'd suggest you to look into it eventually anyway, since at this
point I'd say MSYS2 is the recommended way to build Inkscape on
Windows. I certainly won't touch devlibs for master anymore and
I'm even considering to compile 0.92.2 with it, at least as a
"beta" or "technology preview". All my development happens on
MSYS2 nowadays.
Use "Git GUI". It ships with Git for Windows and simplifies
stuff like looking at diffs and the log greatly.
Use a dedicated GUI front-end for Git. Personally I'm working
a lot with SourceTree [1] which has a lot of features that I use
regularly and are not convenient to use on the command line (at
least for me), e.g.
looking at / searching in commit history
git blame
looking at commit diffs
staging / adding a list of files (simply by using checkboxes
instead of specifying all filenames);
it even supports staging parts of files (e.g. I can choose to
exclude my debug output from a commit line-by-line - try that
on a command line without crying!).