Merge branch 'js/visual-studio'

Support building Git with Visual Studio

The bits about .git/branches/* have been dropped from the series.
We may want to drop the support for it, but until that happens, the
tests should rely on the existence of the support to pass.

* js/visual-studio: (23 commits)
  git: avoid calling aliased builtins via their dashed form
  bin-wrappers: append `.exe` to target paths if necessary
  .gitignore: ignore Visual Studio's temporary/generated files
  .gitignore: touch up the entries regarding Visual Studio
  vcxproj: also link-or-copy builtins
  msvc: add a Makefile target to pre-generate the Visual Studio solution
  contrib/buildsystems: add a backend for modern Visual Studio versions
  contrib/buildsystems: handle options starting with a slash
  contrib/buildsystems: also handle -lexpat
  contrib/buildsystems: handle libiconv, too
  contrib/buildsystems: handle the curl library option
  contrib/buildsystems: error out on unknown option
  contrib/buildsystems: optionally capture the dry-run in a file
  contrib/buildsystems: redirect errors of the dry run into a log file
  contrib/buildsystems: ignore gettext stuff
  contrib/buildsystems: handle quoted spaces in filenames
  contrib/buildsystems: fix misleading error message
  contrib/buildsystems: ignore irrelevant files in Generators/
  contrib/buildsystems: ignore invalidcontinue.obj
  Vcproj.pm: urlencode '<' and '>' when generating VC projects
  ...

1 files changed, 23 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/compat/vcbuild/README b/compat/vcbuild/README
index b633e7db983..1b6dabf5a23 100644
--- a/compat/vcbuild/README
+++ b/compat/vcbuild/README
@@ -37,6 +37,29 @@ The Steps to Build Git with VS2015 or VS2017 from the command line.
 
 ================================================================
 
+Alternatively, run `make vcxproj` and then load the generated `git.sln` in
+Visual Studio. The initial build will install the vcpkg system and build the
+dependencies automatically. This will take a while.
+
+Instead of generating the `git.sln` file yourself (which requires a full Git
+for Windows SDK), you may want to consider fetching the `vs/master` branch of
+https://github.com/git-for-windows/git instead (which is updated automatically
+via CI running `make vcxproj`). The `vs/master` branch does not require a Git
+for Windows to build, but you can run the test scripts in a regular Git Bash.
+
+Note that `make vcxproj` will automatically add and commit the generated `.sln`
+and `.vcxproj` files to the repo. This is necessary to allow building a
+fully-testable Git in Visual Studio, where a regular Git Bash can be used to
+run the test scripts (as opposed to a full Git for Windows SDK): a number of
+build targets, such as Git commands implemented as Unix shell scripts (where
+`@@SHELL_PATH@@` and other placeholders are interpolated) require a full-blown
+Git for Windows SDK (which is about 10x the size of a regular Git for Windows
+installation).
+
+If your plan is to open a Pull Request with Git for Windows, it is a good idea
+to drop this commit before submitting.
+
+================================================================
 The Steps of Build Git with VS2008
 
 1. You need the build environment, which contains the Git dependencies