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 ;# as yourself
   9         # make prefix=/usr install install-doc ;# 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 ;# as root
  23
  24
  25 Issues of note:
  26
  27  - git normally installs a helper script wrapper called "git", which
  28    conflicts with a similarly named "GNU interactive tools" program.
  29
  30    Tough.  Either don't use the wrapper script, or delete the old GNU
  31    interactive tools.  None of the core git stuff needs the wrapper,
  32    it's just a convenient shorthand and while it is documented in some
  33    places, you can always replace "git commit" with "git-commit"
  34    instead.
  35
  36    But let's face it, most of us don't have GNU interactive tools, and
  37    even if we had it, we wouldn't know what it does.  I don't think it
  38    has been actively developed since 1997, and people have moved over to
  39    graphical file managers.
  40
  41  - You can use git after building but without installing if you
  42    wanted to.  Various git commands need to find other git
  43    commands and scripts to do their work, so you would need to
  44    arrange a few environment variables to tell them that their
  45    friends will be found in your built source area instead of at
  46    their standard installation area.  Something like this works
  47    for me:
  48
  49         GIT_EXEC_PATH=`pwd`
  50         PATH=`pwd`:$PATH
  51         GITPERLLIB=`pwd`/perl/blib/lib
  52         export GIT_EXEC_PATH PATH GITPERLLIB
  53
  54  - Git is reasonably self-sufficient, but does depend on a few external
  55    programs and libraries:
  56
  57         - "zlib", the compression library. Git won't build without it.
  58
  59         - "openssl".  The git-rev-list program uses bignum support from
  60           openssl, and unless you specify otherwise, you'll also get the
  61           SHA1 library from here.
  62
  63           If you don't have openssl, you can use one of the SHA1 libraries
  64           that come with git (git includes the one from Mozilla, and has
  65           its own PowerPC and ARM optimized ones too - see the Makefile).
  66
  67         - "libcurl" and "curl" executable.  git-http-fetch and
  68           git-fetch use them.  If you do not use http
  69           transfer, you are probably OK if you do not have
  70           them.
  71
  72         - expat library; git-http-push uses it for remote lock
  73           management over DAV.  Similar to "curl" above, this is optional.
  74
  75         - "GNU diff" to generate patches.  Of course, you don't _have_ to
  76           generate patches if you don't want to, but let's face it, you'll
  77           be wanting to. Or why did you get git in the first place?
  78
  79           Non-GNU versions of the diff/patch programs don't generally support
  80           the unified patch format (which is the one git uses), so you
  81           really do want to get the GNU one.  Trust me, you will want to
  82           do that even if it wasn't for git.  There's no point in living
  83           in the dark ages any more.
  84
  85         - "merge", the standard UNIX three-way merge program.  It usually
  86           comes with the "rcs" package on most Linux distributions, so if
  87           you have a developer install you probably have it already, but a
  88           "graphical user desktop" install might have left it out.
  89
  90           You'll only need the merge program if you do development using
  91           git, and if you only use git to track other peoples work you'll
  92           never notice the lack of it.
  93
  94         - "wish", the Tcl/Tk windowing shell is used in gitk to show the
  95           history graphically
  96
  97         - "ssh" is used to push and pull over the net
  98
  99         - "perl" and POSIX-compliant shells are needed to use most of
 100           the barebone Porcelainish scripts.
 101
 102         - "python" 2.3 or more recent; if you have 2.3, you may need
 103           to build with "make WITH_OWN_SUBPROCESS_PY=YesPlease".
 104
 105  - Some platform specific issues are dealt with Makefile rules,
 106    but depending on your specific installation, you may not
 107    have all the libraries/tools needed, or you may have
 108    necessary libraries at unusual locations.  Please look at the
 109    top of the Makefile to see what can be adjusted for your needs.
 110    You can place local settings in config.mak and the Makefile
 111    will include them.  Note that config.mak is not distributed;
 112    the name is reserved for local settings.
 113
 114  - To build and install documentation suite, you need to have the
 115    asciidoc/xmlto toolchain.  Alternatively, pre-formatted
 116    documentation are available in "html" and "man" branches of the git
 117    repository itself.  For example, you could:
 118
 119         $ mkdir manual && cd manual
 120         $ git init-db
 121         $ git fetch-pack git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git man html |
 122           while read a b
 123           do
 124             echo $a >.git/$b
 125           done
 126         $ cp .git/refs/heads/man .git/refs/heads/master
 127         $ git checkout
 128
 129    to checkout the pre-built man pages.  Also in this repository:
 130
 131         $ git checkout html
 132
 133    would instead give you a copy of what you see at:
 134
 135         http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/
 136