Or rather, I remember what was working earlier when I was doing Rails stuff using Git repositories on Windows without msysgit installed.
On a *nix based system with Git installed, simply running the following command in your Rails app directory would install the desired plugin:
ruby script/plugin install git://github.com/freelancing-god/thinking-sphinx.git
But running the same command on Windows without Git installed results in the system THINKING the plugin was installed (and even saying it was) but navigating into /app_name/vender/plugins/thinking-sphinx simply ended in an empty directory.
THE SOLUTION is to run the same command slightly modified:
ruby script/plugin install http://github.com/freelancing-god/thinking-sphinx.git/
The plugin installs correctly, even without Git installed on a Windows machine. 
Simply by changing the protocol from git:// to http:// and putting the trailing slash after the .git extension is all that is needed.
WHAT A RELIEF!
Tags: git, github, Linux, plugins, rails, ruby, ruby on rails, thinking sphinx, web development
