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
32 # make prefix=... 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 Note that the profile feedback build stage currently generates
40 a lot of additional compiler warnings.
44 - Ancient versions of GNU Interactive Tools (pre-4.9.2) installed a
45 program "git", whose name conflicts with this program. But with
46 version 4.9.2, after long hiatus without active maintenance (since
47 around 1997), it changed its name to gnuit and the name conflict is no
50 NOTE: When compiled with backward compatibility option, the GNU
51 Interactive Tools package still can install "git", but you can build it
52 with --disable-transition option to avoid this.
54 - You can use git after building but without installing if you want
55 to test drive it. Simply run git found in bin-wrappers directory
56 in the build directory, or prepend that directory to your $PATH.
57 This however is less efficient than running an installed git, as
58 you always need an extra fork+exec to run any git subcommand.
60 It is still possible to use git without installing by setting a few
61 environment variables, which was the way this was done
62 traditionally. But using git found in bin-wrappers directory in
63 the build directory is far simpler. As a historical reference, the
64 old way went like this:
68 GITPERLLIB=`pwd`/perl/blib/lib
69 export GIT_EXEC_PATH PATH GITPERLLIB
71 - Git is reasonably self-sufficient, but does depend on a few external
72 programs and libraries. Git can be used without most of them by adding
73 the approriate "NO_<LIBRARY>=YesPlease" to the make command line or
76 - "zlib", the compression library. Git won't build without it.
78 - "ssh" is used to push and pull over the net.
80 - A POSIX-compliant shell is required to run many scripts needed
81 for everyday use (e.g. "bisect", "pull").
83 - "Perl" version 5.8 or later is needed to use some of the
84 features (e.g. preparing a partial commit using "git add -i/-p",
85 interacting with svn repositories with "git svn"). If you can
86 live without these, use NO_PERL.
88 - "openssl" library is used by git-imap-send to use IMAP over SSL.
89 If you don't need it, use NO_OPENSSL.
91 By default, git uses OpenSSL for SHA1 but it will use it's own
92 library (inspired by Mozilla's) with either NO_OPENSSL or
93 BLK_SHA1. Also included is a version optimized for PowerPC
96 - "libcurl" library is used by git-http-fetch and git-fetch. You
97 might also want the "curl" executable for debugging purposes.
98 If you do not use http:// or https:// repositories, you do not
99 have to have them (use NO_CURL).
101 - "expat" library; git-http-push uses it for remote lock
102 management over DAV. Similar to "curl" above, this is optional
105 - "wish", the Tcl/Tk windowing shell is used in gitk to show the
106 history graphically, and in git-gui. If you don't want gitk or
107 git-gui, you can use NO_TCLTK.
109 - Some platform specific issues are dealt with Makefile rules,
110 but depending on your specific installation, you may not
111 have all the libraries/tools needed, or you may have
112 necessary libraries at unusual locations. Please look at the
113 top of the Makefile to see what can be adjusted for your needs.
114 You can place local settings in config.mak and the Makefile
115 will include them. Note that config.mak is not distributed;
116 the name is reserved for local settings.
118 - To build and install documentation suite, you need to have
119 the asciidoc/xmlto toolchain. Because not many people are
120 inclined to install the tools, the default build target
121 ("make all") does _not_ build them.
123 "make doc" builds documentation in man and html formats; there are
124 also "make man", "make html" and "make info". Note that "make html"
125 requires asciidoc, but not xmlto. "make man" (and thus make doc)
128 "make install-doc" installs documentation in man format only; there
129 are also "make install-man", "make install-html" and "make
132 Building and installing the info file additionally requires
133 makeinfo and docbook2X. Version 0.8.3 is known to work.
135 Building and installing the pdf file additionally requires
136 dblatex. Version 0.2.7 with asciidoc >= 8.2.7 is known to work.
138 The documentation is written for AsciiDoc 7, but by default
139 uses some compatibility wrappers to work on AsciiDoc 8. If you have
140 AsciiDoc 7, try "make ASCIIDOC7=YesPlease".
142 There are also "make quick-install-doc", "make quick-install-man"
143 and "make quick-install-html" which install preformatted man pages
144 and html documentation. To use these build targets, you need to
145 clone two separate git-htmldocs and git-manpages repositories next
146 to the clone of git itself.
148 It has been reported that docbook-xsl version 1.72 and 1.73 are
149 buggy; 1.72 misformats manual pages for callouts, and 1.73 needs
150 the patch in contrib/patches/docbook-xsl-manpages-charmap.patch
152 Users attempting to build the documentation on Cygwin may need to ensure
153 that the /etc/xml/catalog file looks something like this:
155 <?xml version="1.0"?>
156 <!DOCTYPE catalog PUBLIC
157 "-//OASIS//DTD Entity Resolution XML Catalog V1.0//EN"
158 "http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/entity/release/1.0/catalog.dtd"
160 <catalog xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:entity:xmlns:xml:catalog">
162 uriStartString = "http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current"
163 rewritePrefix = "/usr/share/sgml/docbook/xsl-stylesheets"
166 uriStartString="http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5"
167 rewritePrefix="/usr/share/sgml/docbook/xml-dtd-4.5"
171 This can be achieved with the following two xmlcatalog commands:
175 http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current \
176 /usr/share/sgml/docbook/xsl-stylesheets \
181 http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/xsl/current \
182 /usr/share/sgml/docbook/xml-dtd-4.5 \