Hi Maven's release plugin prepares a call Git like in this example: cmd.exe /X /C "git commit --verbose -F C:\cygwin\tmp\maven-scm-915771020.commit pom.xml" Git doesn't seem to understand the -F argument and treats it like a relative path (relative to the repository root): $ cmd.exe /X /C "git commit --verbose -F C:\cygwin\tmp\commit pom.xml" fatal: could not read log file 'mytestdir/C:\cygwin\tmp\commit': No such file or directory -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html