INSTALLon commit Teach git diff-tree --stdin to diff trees (140b378)
   1
   2                Git installation
   3
   4Normally you can just do "make" followed by "make install", and that
   5will install the git programs in your own ~/bin/ directory.  If you want
   6to 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-info ;# as root
  10
  11(or prefix=/usr/local, of course).  Just like any program suite
  12that uses $prefix, the built results have some paths encoded,
  13which are derived from $prefix, so "make all; make prefix=/usr
  14install" would not work.
  15
  16Alternatively you can use autoconf generated ./configure script to
  17set 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
  25Issues 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   Building and installing the info file additionally requires
  93   makeinfo and docbook2X.  Version 0.8.3 is known to work.
  94
  95   The documentation is written for AsciiDoc 7, but "make
  96   ASCIIDOC8=YesPlease doc" will let you format with AsciiDoc 8.
  97
  98   Alternatively, pre-formatted documentation are available in
  99   "html" and "man" branches of the git repository itself.  For
 100   example, you could:
 101
 102        $ mkdir manual && cd manual
 103        $ git init
 104        $ git fetch-pack git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git man html |
 105          while read a b
 106          do
 107            echo $a >.git/$b
 108          done
 109        $ cp .git/refs/heads/man .git/refs/heads/master
 110        $ git checkout
 111
 112   to checkout the pre-built man pages.  Also in this repository:
 113
 114        $ git checkout html
 115
 116   would instead give you a copy of what you see at:
 117
 118        http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/
 119
 120   It has been reported that docbook-xsl version 1.72 and 1.73 are
 121   buggy; 1.72 misformats manual pages for callouts, and 1.73 needs
 122   the patch in contrib/patches/docbook-xsl-manpages-charmap.patch