GIT-VERSION-FILE: check ./version first.

[thirdparty/git.git] / INSTALL

diff --git a/INSTALL b/INSTALL
index fa9bf74a208697bd4c6cd5c91f3335b2f5475a49..361c65bacc50b4038cb9a32bab07c275a1ecdc76 100644 (file)
--- a/INSTALL
+++ b/INSTALL
@@ -38,6 +38,19 @@ Issues of note:
    has been actively developed since 1997, and people have moved over to
    graphical file managers.
 
+ - You can use git after building but without installing if you
+   wanted to.  Various git commands need to find other git
+   commands and scripts to do their work, so you would need to
+   arrange a few environment variables to tell them that their
+   friends will be found in your built source area instead of at
+   their standard installation area.  Something like this works
+   for me:
+
+       GIT_EXEC_PATH=`pwd`
+       PATH=`pwd`:$PATH
+       GITPERLLIB=`pwd`/perl/blib/lib
+       export GIT_EXEC_PATH PATH GITPERLLIB
+
  - Git is reasonably self-sufficient, but does depend on a few external
    programs and libraries:
 
@@ -59,25 +72,6 @@ Issues of note:
        - expat library; git-http-push uses it for remote lock
          management over DAV.  Similar to "curl" above, this is optional.
 
-       - "GNU diff" to generate patches.  Of course, you don't _have_ to
-         generate patches if you don't want to, but let's face it, you'll
-         be wanting to. Or why did you get git in the first place?
-
-         Non-GNU versions of the diff/patch programs don't generally support
-         the unified patch format (which is the one git uses), so you
-         really do want to get the GNU one.  Trust me, you will want to
-         do that even if it wasn't for git.  There's no point in living
-         in the dark ages any more. 
-
-       - "merge", the standard UNIX three-way merge program.  It usually
-         comes with the "rcs" package on most Linux distributions, so if
-         you have a developer install you probably have it already, but a
-         "graphical user desktop" install might have left it out.
-
-         You'll only need the merge program if you do development using
-         git, and if you only use git to track other peoples work you'll
-         never notice the lack of it. 
-
         - "wish", the Tcl/Tk windowing shell is used in gitk to show the
           history graphically
 
@@ -86,9 +80,6 @@ Issues of note:
        - "perl" and POSIX-compliant shells are needed to use most of
          the barebone Porcelainish scripts.
 
-       - "python" 2.3 or more recent; if you have 2.3, you may need
-          to build with "make WITH_OWN_SUBPROCESS_PY=YesPlease".
-
  - Some platform specific issues are dealt with Makefile rules,
    but depending on your specific installation, you may not
    have all the libraries/tools needed, or you may have
@@ -104,7 +95,7 @@ Issues of note:
    repository itself.  For example, you could:
 
        $ mkdir manual && cd manual
-       $ git init-db
+       $ git init
        $ git fetch-pack git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git man html |
          while read a b
          do