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 The beginning of the Makefile documents many variables that affect the way
  17 git is built.  You can override them either from the command line, or in a
  18 config.mak file.
  19
  20 Alternatively you can use autoconf generated ./configure script to
  21 set up install paths (via config.mak.autogen), so you can write instead
  22
  23         $ make configure ;# as yourself
  24         $ ./configure --prefix=/usr ;# as yourself
  25         $ make all doc ;# as yourself
  26         # make install install-doc install-html;# as root
  27
  28 If you're willing to trade off (much) longer build time for a later
  29 faster git you can also do a profile feedback build with
  30
  31         $ make prefix=/usr profile
  32         # make prefix=/usr PROFILE=BUILD install
  33
  34 This will run the complete test suite as training workload and then
  35 rebuild git with the generated profile feedback. This results in a git
  36 which is a few percent faster on CPU intensive workloads.  This
  37 may be a good tradeoff for distribution packagers.
  38
  39 Alternatively you can run profile feedback only with the git benchmark
  40 suite. This runs significantly faster than the full test suite, but
  41 has less coverage:
  42
  43         $ make prefix=/usr profile-fast
  44         # make prefix=/usr PROFILE=BUILD install
  45
  46 Or if you just want to install a profile-optimized version of git into
  47 your home directory, you could run:
  48
  49         $ make profile-install
  50
  51 or
  52         $ make profile-fast-install
  53
  54 As a caveat: a profile-optimized build takes a *lot* longer since the
  55 git tree must be built twice, and in order for the profiling
  56 measurements to work properly, ccache must be disabled and the test
  57 suite has to be run using only a single CPU.  In addition, the profile
  58 feedback build stage currently generates a lot of additional compiler
  59 warnings.
  60
  61 Issues of note:
  62
  63  - Ancient versions of GNU Interactive Tools (pre-4.9.2) installed a
  64    program "git", whose name conflicts with this program.  But with
  65    version 4.9.2, after long hiatus without active maintenance (since
  66    around 1997), it changed its name to gnuit and the name conflict is no
  67    longer a problem.
  68
  69    NOTE: When compiled with backward compatibility option, the GNU
  70    Interactive Tools package still can install "git", but you can build it
  71    with --disable-transition option to avoid this.
  72
  73  - You can use git after building but without installing if you want
  74    to test drive it.  Simply run git found in bin-wrappers directory
  75    in the build directory, or prepend that directory to your $PATH.
  76    This however is less efficient than running an installed git, as
  77    you always need an extra fork+exec to run any git subcommand.
  78
  79    It is still possible to use git without installing by setting a few
  80    environment variables, which was the way this was done
  81    traditionally.  But using git found in bin-wrappers directory in
  82    the build directory is far simpler.  As a historical reference, the
  83    old way went like this:
  84
  85         GIT_EXEC_PATH=`pwd`
  86         PATH=`pwd`:$PATH
  87         GITPERLLIB=`pwd`/perl/build/lib
  88         export GIT_EXEC_PATH PATH GITPERLLIB
  89
  90  - By default (unless NO_PERL is provided) Git will ship various perl
  91    scripts. However, for simplicity it doesn't use the
  92    ExtUtils::MakeMaker toolchain to decide where to place the perl
  93    libraries. Depending on the system this can result in the perl
  94    libraries not being where you'd like them if they're expected to be
  95    used by things other than Git itself.
  96
  97    Manually supplying a perllibdir prefix should fix this, if this is
  98    a problem you care about, e.g.:
  99
 100        prefix=/usr perllibdir=/usr/$(/usr/bin/perl -MConfig -wle 'print substr $Config{installsitelib}, 1 + length $Config{siteprefixexp}')
 101
 102    Will result in e.g. perllibdir=/usr/share/perl/5.26.1 on Debian,
 103    perllibdir=/usr/share/perl5 (which we'd use by default) on CentOS.
 104
 105  - Unless NO_PERL is provided Git will ship various perl libraries it
 106    needs. Distributors of Git will usually want to set
 107    NO_PERL_CPAN_FALLBACKS if NO_PERL is not provided to use their own
 108    copies of the CPAN modules Git needs.
 109
 110  - Git is reasonably self-sufficient, but does depend on a few external
 111    programs and libraries.  Git can be used without most of them by adding
 112    the approriate "NO_<LIBRARY>=YesPlease" to the make command line or
 113    config.mak file.
 114
 115         - "zlib", the compression library. Git won't build without it.
 116
 117         - "ssh" is used to push and pull over the net.
 118
 119         - A POSIX-compliant shell is required to run many scripts needed
 120           for everyday use (e.g. "bisect", "pull").
 121
 122         - "Perl" version 5.8 or later is needed to use some of the
 123           features (e.g. preparing a partial commit using "git add -i/-p",
 124           interacting with svn repositories with "git svn").  If you can
 125           live without these, use NO_PERL.  Note that recent releases of
 126           Redhat/Fedora are reported to ship Perl binary package with some
 127           core modules stripped away (see http://lwn.net/Articles/477234/),
 128           so you might need to install additional packages other than Perl
 129           itself, e.g. Time::HiRes.
 130
 131         - git-imap-send needs the OpenSSL library to talk IMAP over SSL if
 132           you are using libcurl older than 7.34.0.  Otherwise you can use
 133           NO_OPENSSL without losing git-imap-send.
 134
 135           By default, git uses OpenSSL for SHA1 but it will use its own
 136           library (inspired by Mozilla's) with either NO_OPENSSL or
 137           BLK_SHA1.  Also included is a version optimized for PowerPC
 138           (PPC_SHA1).
 139
 140         - "libcurl" library is used by git-http-fetch, git-fetch, and, if
 141           the curl version >= 7.34.0, for git-imap-send.  You might also
 142           want the "curl" executable for debugging purposes. If you do not
 143           use http:// or https:// repositories, and do not want to put
 144           patches into an IMAP mailbox, you do not have to have them
 145           (use NO_CURL).
 146
 147         - "expat" library; git-http-push uses it for remote lock
 148           management over DAV.  Similar to "curl" above, this is optional
 149           (with NO_EXPAT).
 150
 151         - "wish", the Tcl/Tk windowing shell is used in gitk to show the
 152           history graphically, and in git-gui.  If you don't want gitk or
 153           git-gui, you can use NO_TCLTK.
 154
 155         - A gettext library is used by default for localizing Git. The
 156           primary target is GNU libintl, but the Solaris gettext
 157           implementation also works.
 158
 159           We need a gettext.h on the system for C code, gettext.sh (or
 160           Solaris gettext(1)) for shell scripts, and libintl-perl for Perl
 161           programs.
 162
 163           Set NO_GETTEXT to disable localization support and make Git only
 164           use English. Under autoconf the configure script will do this
 165           automatically if it can't find libintl on the system.
 166
 167         - Python version 2.4 or later (but not 3.x, which is not
 168           supported by Perforce) is needed to use the git-p4 interface
 169           to Perforce.
 170
 171  - Some platform specific issues are dealt with Makefile rules,
 172    but depending on your specific installation, you may not
 173    have all the libraries/tools needed, or you may have
 174    necessary libraries at unusual locations.  Please look at the
 175    top of the Makefile to see what can be adjusted for your needs.
 176    You can place local settings in config.mak and the Makefile
 177    will include them.  Note that config.mak is not distributed;
 178    the name is reserved for local settings.
 179
 180  - To build and install documentation suite, you need to have
 181    the asciidoc/xmlto toolchain.  Because not many people are
 182    inclined to install the tools, the default build target
 183    ("make all") does _not_ build them.
 184
 185    "make doc" builds documentation in man and html formats; there are
 186    also "make man", "make html" and "make info". Note that "make html"
 187    requires asciidoc, but not xmlto. "make man" (and thus make doc)
 188    requires both.
 189
 190    "make install-doc" installs documentation in man format only; there
 191    are also "make install-man", "make install-html" and "make
 192    install-info".
 193
 194    Building and installing the info file additionally requires
 195    makeinfo and docbook2X.  Version 0.8.3 is known to work.
 196
 197    Building and installing the pdf file additionally requires
 198    dblatex.  Version >= 0.2.7 is known to work.
 199
 200    All formats require at least asciidoc 8.4.1.
 201
 202    There are also "make quick-install-doc", "make quick-install-man"
 203    and "make quick-install-html" which install preformatted man pages
 204    and html documentation. To use these build targets, you need to
 205    clone two separate git-htmldocs and git-manpages repositories next
 206    to the clone of git itself.
 207
 208    It has been reported that docbook-xsl version 1.72 and 1.73 are
 209    buggy; 1.72 misformats manual pages for callouts, and 1.73 needs
 210    the patch in contrib/patches/docbook-xsl-manpages-charmap.patch
 211
 212    Users attempting to build the documentation on Cygwin may need to ensure
 213    that the /etc/xml/catalog file looks something like this:
 214
 215    <?xml version="1.0"?>
 216    <!DOCTYPE catalog PUBLIC
 217       "-//OASIS//DTD Entity Resolution XML Catalog V1.0//EN"
 218       "http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/entity/release/1.0/catalog.dtd"
 219    >
 220    <catalog xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:entity:xmlns:xml:catalog">
 221      <rewriteURI
 222        uriStartString = "http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current"
 223        rewritePrefix = "/usr/share/sgml/docbook/xsl-stylesheets"
 224      />
 225      <rewriteURI
 226        uriStartString="http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5"
 227        rewritePrefix="/usr/share/sgml/docbook/xml-dtd-4.5"
 228      />
 229   </catalog>
 230
 231   This can be achieved with the following two xmlcatalog commands:
 232
 233   xmlcatalog --noout \
 234      --add rewriteURI \
 235         http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current \
 236         /usr/share/sgml/docbook/xsl-stylesheets \
 237      /etc/xml/catalog
 238
 239   xmlcatalog --noout \
 240      --add rewriteURI \
 241          http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/xsl/current \
 242          /usr/share/sgml/docbook/xml-dtd-4.5 \
 243      /etc/xml/catalog