INSTALL

   1
   2                 Git installation
   3
   4 Normally you can just do "make" followed by "make install", and that
   5 will install the git programs in your own ~/bin/ directory.  If you want
   6 to do a global install, you can do
   7
   8         $ make prefix=/usr all doc info ;# as yourself
   9         # make prefix=/usr install install-doc install-html install-info ;# as root
  10
  11 (or prefix=/usr/local, of course).  Just like any program suite
  12 that uses $prefix, the built results have some paths encoded,
  13 which are derived from $prefix, so "make all; make prefix=/usr
  14 install" would not work.
  15
  16 Alternatively you can use autoconf generated ./configure script to
  17 set up install paths (via config.mak.autogen), so you can write instead
  18
  19         $ make configure ;# as yourself
  20         $ ./configure --prefix=/usr ;# as yourself
  21         $ make all doc ;# as yourself
  22         # make install install-doc install-html;# as root
  23
  24
  25 Issues of note:
  26
  27  - Ancient versions of GNU Interactive Tools (pre-4.9.2) installed a
  28    program "git", whose name conflicts with this program.  But with
  29    version 4.9.2, after long hiatus without active maintenance (since
  30    around 1997), it changed its name to gnuit and the name conflict is no
  31    longer a problem.
  32
  33    NOTE: When compiled with backward compatibility option, the GNU
  34    Interactive Tools package still can install "git", but you can build it
  35    with --disable-transition option to avoid this.
  36
  37  - You can use git after building but without installing if you
  38    wanted to.  Various git commands need to find other git
  39    commands and scripts to do their work, so you would need to
  40    arrange a few environment variables to tell them that their
  41    friends will be found in your built source area instead of at
  42    their standard installation area.  Something like this works
  43    for me:
  44
  45         GIT_EXEC_PATH=`pwd`
  46         PATH=`pwd`:$PATH
  47         GITPERLLIB=`pwd`/perl/blib/lib
  48         export GIT_EXEC_PATH PATH GITPERLLIB
  49
  50  - Git is reasonably self-sufficient, but does depend on a few external
  51    programs and libraries:
  52
  53         - "zlib", the compression library. Git won't build without it.
  54
  55         - "openssl".  Unless you specify otherwise, you'll get the SHA1
  56           library from here.
  57
  58           If you don't have openssl, you can use one of the SHA1 libraries
  59           that come with git (git includes the one from Mozilla, and has
  60           its own PowerPC and ARM optimized ones too - see the Makefile).
  61
  62         - libcurl library; git-http-fetch and git-fetch use them.  You
  63           might also want the "curl" executable for debugging purposes.
  64           If you do not use http transfer, you are probably OK if you
  65           do not have them.
  66
  67         - expat library; git-http-push uses it for remote lock
  68           management over DAV.  Similar to "curl" above, this is optional.
  69
  70         - "wish", the Tcl/Tk windowing shell is used in gitk to show the
  71           history graphically, and in git-gui.
  72
  73         - "ssh" is used to push and pull over the net
  74
  75         - "perl" and POSIX-compliant shells are needed to use most of
  76           the bare-bones Porcelainish scripts.
  77
  78  - Some platform specific issues are dealt with Makefile rules,
  79    but depending on your specific installation, you may not
  80    have all the libraries/tools needed, or you may have
  81    necessary libraries at unusual locations.  Please look at the
  82    top of the Makefile to see what can be adjusted for your needs.
  83    You can place local settings in config.mak and the Makefile
  84    will include them.  Note that config.mak is not distributed;
  85    the name is reserved for local settings.
  86
  87  - To build and install documentation suite, you need to have
  88    the asciidoc/xmlto toolchain.  Because not many people are
  89    inclined to install the tools, the default build target
  90    ("make all") does _not_ build them.
  91
  92    "make doc" builds documentation in man and html formats; there are
  93    also "make man", "make html" and "make info". Note that "make html"
  94    requires asciidoc, but not xmlto. "make man" (and thus make doc)
  95    requires both.
  96
  97    "make install-doc" installs documentation in man format only; there
  98    are also "make install-man", "make install-html" and "make
  99    install-info".
 100
 101    Building and installing the info file additionally requires
 102    makeinfo and docbook2X.  Version 0.8.3 is known to work.
 103
 104    The documentation is written for AsciiDoc 7, but "make
 105    ASCIIDOC8=YesPlease doc" will let you format with AsciiDoc 8.
 106
 107    Alternatively, pre-formatted documentation is available in
 108    "html" and "man" branches of the git repository itself.  For
 109    example, you could:
 110
 111         $ mkdir manual && cd manual
 112         $ git init
 113         $ git fetch-pack git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git man html |
 114           while read a b
 115           do
 116             echo $a >.git/$b
 117           done
 118         $ cp .git/refs/heads/man .git/refs/heads/master
 119         $ git checkout
 120
 121    to checkout the pre-built man pages.  Also in this repository:
 122
 123         $ git checkout html
 124
 125    would instead give you a copy of what you see at:
 126
 127         http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/
 128
 129    There are also "make quick-install-doc", "make quick-install-man"
 130    and "make quick-install-html" which install preformatted man pages
 131    and html documentation.
 132    This does not require asciidoc/xmlto, but it only works from within
 133    a cloned checkout of git.git with these two extra branches, and will
 134    not work for the maintainer for obvious chicken-and-egg reasons.
 135
 136    It has been reported that docbook-xsl version 1.72 and 1.73 are
 137    buggy; 1.72 misformats manual pages for callouts, and 1.73 needs
 138    the patch in contrib/patches/docbook-xsl-manpages-charmap.patch