GitHub's Git Bash (MSysGit) showing wrong time(zone) on Windows

Question

I'm on GMT-3, but the date command in the bash port bundled by GitHub's Git for Windows doesn't see this, instead picking the UTC time and thinking it's local time too.

    

In comparison, here's a healthy box running on GMT-4:

    

How can I make my scripts show the correct time, in a way that works cross-platform even in MSysGit?

(Related: a question about a similar issue with Cygwin)

Answer 1

This function will give you the correct time, whether you run it on Windows or Linux:

# Are we running on Windows?
isWindows() { [[ -n "$WINDIR" ]]; }

# Get time, cross-platform.
getTime() {
    if isWindows; then
        cmd.exe "/c echo %time%" | head -c 8 | tr ' ' 0 # pad single-digit hours.
    else
        date +%T
    fi
}

Getting the date too is left as an exercise for the read (hint hint: %date%).