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
8 $ make prefix=/usr all doc info ;# as yourself
9 # make prefix=/usr install install-doc install-html install-info ;# as root
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.
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
20 Alternatively you can use autoconf generated ./configure script to
21 set up install paths (via config.mak.autogen), so you can write instead
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
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
31 $ make prefix=/usr PROFILE=BUILD all
32 # make prefix=/usr PROFILE=BUILD install
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.
39 Or if you just want to install a profile-optimized version of git into
40 your home directory, you could run:
42 $ make PROFILE=BUILD install
44 As a caveat: a profile-optimized build takes a *lot* longer since the
45 git tree must be built twice, and in order for the profiling
46 measurements to work properly, ccache must be disabled and the test
47 suite has to be run using only a single CPU. In addition, the profile
48 feedback build stage currently generates a lot of additional compiler
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
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.
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.
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:
77 GITPERLLIB=`pwd`/perl/blib/lib
78 export GIT_EXEC_PATH PATH GITPERLLIB
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
85 - "zlib", the compression library. Git won't build without it.
87 - "ssh" is used to push and pull over the net.
89 - A POSIX-compliant shell is required to run many scripts needed
90 for everyday use (e.g. "bisect", "pull").
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.
101 - "openssl" library is used by git-imap-send to use IMAP over SSL.
102 If you don't need it, use NO_OPENSSL.
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
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).
114 - "expat" library; git-http-push uses it for remote lock
115 management over DAV. Similar to "curl" above, this is optional
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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)
157 "make install-doc" installs documentation in man format only; there
158 are also "make install-man", "make install-html" and "make
161 Building and installing the info file additionally requires
162 makeinfo and docbook2X. Version 0.8.3 is known to work.
164 Building and installing the pdf file additionally requires
165 dblatex. Version >= 0.2.7 is known to work.
167 All formats require at least asciidoc 8.4.1.
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.
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
179 Users attempting to build the documentation on Cygwin may need to ensure
180 that the /etc/xml/catalog file looks something like this:
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"
187 <catalog xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:entity:xmlns:xml:catalog">
189 uriStartString = "http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current"
190 rewritePrefix = "/usr/share/sgml/docbook/xsl-stylesheets"
193 uriStartString="http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5"
194 rewritePrefix="/usr/share/sgml/docbook/xml-dtd-4.5"
198 This can be achieved with the following two xmlcatalog commands:
202 http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current \
203 /usr/share/sgml/docbook/xsl-stylesheets \
208 http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/xsl/current \
209 /usr/share/sgml/docbook/xml-dtd-4.5 \