INSTALLon commit Merge branch 'jk/diff-algo' into maint (b28325d)
   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-html 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
  16The beginning of the Makefile documents many variables that affect the way
  17git is built.  You can override them either from the command line, or in a
  18config.mak file.
  19
  20Alternatively you can use autoconf generated ./configure script to
  21set 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
  28If you're willing to trade off (much) longer build time for a later
  29faster git you can also do a profile feedback build with
  30
  31        $ make prefix=/usr PROFILE=BUILD all
  32        # make prefix=/usr PROFILE=BUILD install
  33
  34This will run the complete test suite as training workload and then
  35rebuild git with the generated profile feedback. This results in a git
  36which is a few percent faster on CPU intensive workloads.  This
  37may be a good tradeoff for distribution packagers.
  38
  39Or if you just want to install a profile-optimized version of git into
  40your home directory, you could run:
  41
  42        $ make PROFILE=BUILD install
  43
  44As a caveat: a profile-optimized build takes a *lot* longer since the
  45git tree must be built twice, and in order for the profiling
  46measurements to work properly, ccache must be disabled and the test
  47suite has to be run using only a single CPU.  In addition, the profile
  48feedback build stage currently generates a lot of additional compiler
  49warnings.
  50
  51Issues of note:
  52
  53 - Ancient versions of GNU Interactive Tools (pre-4.9.2) installed a
  54   program "git", whose name conflicts with this program.  But with
  55   version 4.9.2, after long hiatus without active maintenance (since
  56   around 1997), it changed its name to gnuit and the name conflict is no
  57   longer a problem.
  58
  59   NOTE: When compiled with backward compatibility option, the GNU
  60   Interactive Tools package still can install "git", but you can build it
  61   with --disable-transition option to avoid this.
  62
  63 - You can use git after building but without installing if you want
  64   to test drive it.  Simply run git found in bin-wrappers directory
  65   in the build directory, or prepend that directory to your $PATH.
  66   This however is less efficient than running an installed git, as
  67   you always need an extra fork+exec to run any git subcommand.
  68
  69   It is still possible to use git without installing by setting a few
  70   environment variables, which was the way this was done
  71   traditionally.  But using git found in bin-wrappers directory in
  72   the build directory is far simpler.  As a historical reference, the
  73   old way went like this:
  74
  75        GIT_EXEC_PATH=`pwd`
  76        PATH=`pwd`:$PATH
  77        GITPERLLIB=`pwd`/perl/blib/lib
  78        export GIT_EXEC_PATH PATH GITPERLLIB
  79
  80 - Git is reasonably self-sufficient, but does depend on a few external
  81   programs and libraries.  Git can be used without most of them by adding
  82   the approriate "NO_<LIBRARY>=YesPlease" to the make command line or
  83   config.mak file.
  84
  85        - "zlib", the compression library. Git won't build without it.
  86
  87        - "ssh" is used to push and pull over the net.
  88
  89        - A POSIX-compliant shell is required to run many scripts needed
  90          for everyday use (e.g. "bisect", "pull").
  91
  92        - "Perl" version 5.8 or later is needed to use some of the
  93          features (e.g. preparing a partial commit using "git add -i/-p",
  94          interacting with svn repositories with "git svn").  If you can
  95          live without these, use NO_PERL.  Note that recent releases of
  96          Redhat/Fedora are reported to ship Perl binary package with some
  97          core modules stripped away (see http://lwn.net/Articles/477234/),
  98          so you might need to install additional packages other than Perl
  99          itself, e.g. Time::HiRes.
 100
 101        - "openssl" library is used by git-imap-send to use IMAP over SSL.
 102          If you don't need it, use NO_OPENSSL.
 103
 104          By default, git uses OpenSSL for SHA1 but it will use its own
 105          library (inspired by Mozilla's) with either NO_OPENSSL or
 106          BLK_SHA1.  Also included is a version optimized for PowerPC
 107          (PPC_SHA1).
 108
 109        - "libcurl" library is used by git-http-fetch and git-fetch.  You
 110          might also want the "curl" executable for debugging purposes.
 111          If you do not use http:// or https:// repositories, you do not
 112          have to have them (use NO_CURL).
 113
 114        - "expat" library; git-http-push uses it for remote lock
 115          management over DAV.  Similar to "curl" above, this is optional
 116          (with NO_EXPAT).
 117
 118        - "wish", the Tcl/Tk windowing shell is used in gitk to show the
 119          history graphically, and in git-gui.  If you don't want gitk or
 120          git-gui, you can use NO_TCLTK.
 121
 122        - A gettext library is used by default for localizing Git. The
 123          primary target is GNU libintl, but the Solaris gettext
 124          implementation also works.
 125
 126          We need a gettext.h on the system for C code, gettext.sh (or
 127          Solaris gettext(1)) for shell scripts, and libintl-perl for Perl
 128          programs.
 129
 130          Set NO_GETTEXT to disable localization support and make Git only
 131          use English. Under autoconf the configure script will do this
 132          automatically if it can't find libintl on the system.
 133
 134        - Python version 2.4 or later (but not 3.x, which is not
 135          supported by Perforce) is needed to use the git-p4 interface
 136          to Perforce.
 137
 138 - Some platform specific issues are dealt with Makefile rules,
 139   but depending on your specific installation, you may not
 140   have all the libraries/tools needed, or you may have
 141   necessary libraries at unusual locations.  Please look at the
 142   top of the Makefile to see what can be adjusted for your needs.
 143   You can place local settings in config.mak and the Makefile
 144   will include them.  Note that config.mak is not distributed;
 145   the name is reserved for local settings.
 146
 147 - To build and install documentation suite, you need to have
 148   the asciidoc/xmlto toolchain.  Because not many people are
 149   inclined to install the tools, the default build target
 150   ("make all") does _not_ build them.
 151
 152   "make doc" builds documentation in man and html formats; there are
 153   also "make man", "make html" and "make info". Note that "make html"
 154   requires asciidoc, but not xmlto. "make man" (and thus make doc)
 155   requires both.
 156
 157   "make install-doc" installs documentation in man format only; there
 158   are also "make install-man", "make install-html" and "make
 159   install-info".
 160
 161   Building and installing the info file additionally requires
 162   makeinfo and docbook2X.  Version 0.8.3 is known to work.
 163
 164   Building and installing the pdf file additionally requires
 165   dblatex.  Version >= 0.2.7 is known to work.
 166
 167   All formats require at least asciidoc 8.4.1.
 168
 169   There are also "make quick-install-doc", "make quick-install-man"
 170   and "make quick-install-html" which install preformatted man pages
 171   and html documentation. To use these build targets, you need to
 172   clone two separate git-htmldocs and git-manpages repositories next
 173   to the clone of git itself.
 174
 175   It has been reported that docbook-xsl version 1.72 and 1.73 are
 176   buggy; 1.72 misformats manual pages for callouts, and 1.73 needs
 177   the patch in contrib/patches/docbook-xsl-manpages-charmap.patch
 178
 179   Users attempting to build the documentation on Cygwin may need to ensure
 180   that the /etc/xml/catalog file looks something like this:
 181
 182   <?xml version="1.0"?>
 183   <!DOCTYPE catalog PUBLIC
 184      "-//OASIS//DTD Entity Resolution XML Catalog V1.0//EN"
 185      "http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/entity/release/1.0/catalog.dtd"
 186   >
 187   <catalog xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:entity:xmlns:xml:catalog">
 188     <rewriteURI
 189       uriStartString = "http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current"
 190       rewritePrefix = "/usr/share/sgml/docbook/xsl-stylesheets"
 191     />
 192     <rewriteURI
 193       uriStartString="http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5"
 194       rewritePrefix="/usr/share/sgml/docbook/xml-dtd-4.5"
 195     />
 196  </catalog>
 197
 198  This can be achieved with the following two xmlcatalog commands:
 199
 200  xmlcatalog --noout \
 201     --add rewriteURI \
 202        http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current \
 203        /usr/share/sgml/docbook/xsl-stylesheets \
 204     /etc/xml/catalog
 205
 206  xmlcatalog --noout \
 207     --add rewriteURI \
 208         http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/xsl/current \
 209         /usr/share/sgml/docbook/xml-dtd-4.5 \
 210     /etc/xml/catalog