INSTALLon commit Allow git-checkout when on a non-existant branch. (5a03e7f)
   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 ;# as yourself
   9        # make prefix=/usr install install-doc ;# 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 - 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 - Git is reasonably self-sufficient, but does depend on a few external
  42   programs and libraries:
  43
  44        - "zlib", the compression library. Git won't build without it.
  45
  46        - "openssl".  The git-rev-list program uses bignum support from
  47          openssl, and unless you specify otherwise, you'll also get the
  48          SHA1 library from here.
  49
  50          If you don't have openssl, you can use one of the SHA1 libraries
  51          that come with git (git includes the one from Mozilla, and has
  52          its own PowerPC and ARM optimized ones too - see the Makefile).
  53
  54        - "libcurl" and "curl" executable.  git-http-fetch and
  55          git-fetch use them.  If you do not use http
  56          transfer, you are probably OK if you do not have
  57          them.
  58
  59        - expat library; git-http-push uses it for remote lock
  60          management over DAV.  Similar to "curl" above, this is optional.
  61
  62        - "GNU diff" to generate patches.  Of course, you don't _have_ to
  63          generate patches if you don't want to, but let's face it, you'll
  64          be wanting to. Or why did you get git in the first place?
  65
  66          Non-GNU versions of the diff/patch programs don't generally support
  67          the unified patch format (which is the one git uses), so you
  68          really do want to get the GNU one.  Trust me, you will want to
  69          do that even if it wasn't for git.  There's no point in living
  70          in the dark ages any more. 
  71
  72        - "merge", the standard UNIX three-way merge program.  It usually
  73          comes with the "rcs" package on most Linux distributions, so if
  74          you have a developer install you probably have it already, but a
  75          "graphical user desktop" install might have left it out.
  76
  77          You'll only need the merge program if you do development using
  78          git, and if you only use git to track other peoples work you'll
  79          never notice the lack of it. 
  80
  81        - "wish", the Tcl/Tk windowing shell is used in gitk to show the
  82          history graphically
  83
  84        - "ssh" is used to push and pull over the net
  85
  86        - "perl" and POSIX-compliant shells are needed to use most of
  87          the barebone Porcelainish scripts.
  88
  89        - "python" 2.3 or more recent; if you have 2.3, you may need
  90          to build with "make WITH_OWN_SUBPROCESS_PY=YesPlease".
  91
  92 - Some platform specific issues are dealt with Makefile rules,
  93   but depending on your specific installation, you may not
  94   have all the libraries/tools needed, or you may have
  95   necessary libraries at unusual locations.  Please look at the
  96   top of the Makefile to see what can be adjusted for your needs.
  97   You can place local settings in config.mak and the Makefile
  98   will include them.  Note that config.mak is not distributed;
  99   the name is reserved for local settings.
 100
 101 - To build and install documentation suite, you need to have the
 102   asciidoc/xmlto toolchain.  Alternatively, pre-formatted
 103   documentation are available in "html" and "man" branches of the git
 104   repository itself.  For example, you could:
 105
 106        $ mkdir manual && cd manual
 107        $ git init-db
 108        $ git fetch-pack git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git man html |
 109          while read a b
 110          do
 111            echo $a >.git/$b
 112          done
 113        $ cp .git/refs/heads/man .git/refs/heads/master
 114        $ git checkout
 115
 116   to checkout the pre-built man pages.  Also in this repository:
 117
 118        $ git checkout html
 119
 120   would instead give you a copy of what you see at:
 121
 122        http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/
 123