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
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 Alternatively you can run profile feedback only with the git benchmark
40 suite. This runs significantly faster than the full test suite, but
43 $ make prefix=/usr profile-fast
44 # make prefix=/usr PROFILE=BUILD install
46 Or if you just want to install a profile-optimized version of git into
47 your home directory, you could run:
49 $ make profile-install
52 $ make profile-fast-install
54 As a caveat: a profile-optimized build takes a *lot* longer since the
55 git tree must be built twice, and in order for the profiling
56 measurements to work properly, ccache must be disabled and the test
57 suite has to be run using only a single CPU. In addition, the profile
58 feedback build stage currently generates a lot of additional compiler
63 - Ancient versions of GNU Interactive Tools (pre-4.9.2) installed a
64 program "git", whose name conflicts with this program. But with
65 version 4.9.2, after long hiatus without active maintenance (since
66 around 1997), it changed its name to gnuit and the name conflict is no
69 NOTE: When compiled with backward compatibility option, the GNU
70 Interactive Tools package still can install "git", but you can build it
71 with --disable-transition option to avoid this.
73 - You can use git after building but without installing if you want
74 to test drive it. Simply run git found in bin-wrappers directory
75 in the build directory, or prepend that directory to your $PATH.
76 This however is less efficient than running an installed git, as
77 you always need an extra fork+exec to run any git subcommand.
79 It is still possible to use git without installing by setting a few
80 environment variables, which was the way this was done
81 traditionally. But using git found in bin-wrappers directory in
82 the build directory is far simpler. As a historical reference, the
83 old way went like this:
87 GITPERLLIB=`pwd`/perl/blib/lib
88 export GIT_EXEC_PATH PATH GITPERLLIB
90 - Git is reasonably self-sufficient, but does depend on a few external
91 programs and libraries. Git can be used without most of them by adding
92 the approriate "NO_<LIBRARY>=YesPlease" to the make command line or
95 - "zlib", the compression library. Git won't build without it.
97 - "ssh" is used to push and pull over the net.
99 - A POSIX-compliant shell is required to run many scripts needed
100 for everyday use (e.g. "bisect", "pull").
102 - "Perl" version 5.8 or later is needed to use some of the
103 features (e.g. preparing a partial commit using "git add -i/-p",
104 interacting with svn repositories with "git svn"). If you can
105 live without these, use NO_PERL. Note that recent releases of
106 Redhat/Fedora are reported to ship Perl binary package with some
107 core modules stripped away (see http://lwn.net/Articles/477234/),
108 so you might need to install additional packages other than Perl
109 itself, e.g. Time::HiRes.
111 - git-imap-send needs the OpenSSL library to talk IMAP over SSL if
112 you are using libcurl older than 7.34.0. Otherwise you can use
113 NO_OPENSSL without losing git-imap-send.
115 By default, git uses OpenSSL for SHA1 but it will use its own
116 library (inspired by Mozilla's) with either NO_OPENSSL or
117 BLK_SHA1. Also included is a version optimized for PowerPC
120 - "libcurl" library is used by git-http-fetch, git-fetch, and, if
121 the curl version >= 7.34.0, for git-imap-send. You might also
122 want the "curl" executable for debugging purposes. If you do not
123 use http:// or https:// repositories, and do not want to put
124 patches into an IMAP mailbox, you do not have to have them
127 - "expat" library; git-http-push uses it for remote lock
128 management over DAV. Similar to "curl" above, this is optional
131 - "wish", the Tcl/Tk windowing shell is used in gitk to show the
132 history graphically, and in git-gui. If you don't want gitk or
133 git-gui, you can use NO_TCLTK.
135 - A gettext library is used by default for localizing Git. The
136 primary target is GNU libintl, but the Solaris gettext
137 implementation also works.
139 We need a gettext.h on the system for C code, gettext.sh (or
140 Solaris gettext(1)) for shell scripts, and libintl-perl for Perl
143 Set NO_GETTEXT to disable localization support and make Git only
144 use English. Under autoconf the configure script will do this
145 automatically if it can't find libintl on the system.
147 - Python version 2.4 or later (but not 3.x, which is not
148 supported by Perforce) is needed to use the git-p4 interface
151 - Some platform specific issues are dealt with Makefile rules,
152 but depending on your specific installation, you may not
153 have all the libraries/tools needed, or you may have
154 necessary libraries at unusual locations. Please look at the
155 top of the Makefile to see what can be adjusted for your needs.
156 You can place local settings in config.mak and the Makefile
157 will include them. Note that config.mak is not distributed;
158 the name is reserved for local settings.
160 - To build and install documentation suite, you need to have
161 the asciidoc/xmlto toolchain. Because not many people are
162 inclined to install the tools, the default build target
163 ("make all") does _not_ build them.
165 "make doc" builds documentation in man and html formats; there are
166 also "make man", "make html" and "make info". Note that "make html"
167 requires asciidoc, but not xmlto. "make man" (and thus make doc)
170 "make install-doc" installs documentation in man format only; there
171 are also "make install-man", "make install-html" and "make
174 Building and installing the info file additionally requires
175 makeinfo and docbook2X. Version 0.8.3 is known to work.
177 Building and installing the pdf file additionally requires
178 dblatex. Version >= 0.2.7 is known to work.
180 All formats require at least asciidoc 8.4.1.
182 There are also "make quick-install-doc", "make quick-install-man"
183 and "make quick-install-html" which install preformatted man pages
184 and html documentation. To use these build targets, you need to
185 clone two separate git-htmldocs and git-manpages repositories next
186 to the clone of git itself.
188 It has been reported that docbook-xsl version 1.72 and 1.73 are
189 buggy; 1.72 misformats manual pages for callouts, and 1.73 needs
190 the patch in contrib/patches/docbook-xsl-manpages-charmap.patch
192 Users attempting to build the documentation on Cygwin may need to ensure
193 that the /etc/xml/catalog file looks something like this:
195 <?xml version="1.0"?>
196 <!DOCTYPE catalog PUBLIC
197 "-//OASIS//DTD Entity Resolution XML Catalog V1.0//EN"
198 "http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/entity/release/1.0/catalog.dtd"
200 <catalog xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:entity:xmlns:xml:catalog">
202 uriStartString = "http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current"
203 rewritePrefix = "/usr/share/sgml/docbook/xsl-stylesheets"
206 uriStartString="http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5"
207 rewritePrefix="/usr/share/sgml/docbook/xml-dtd-4.5"
211 This can be achieved with the following two xmlcatalog commands:
215 http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current \
216 /usr/share/sgml/docbook/xsl-stylesheets \
221 http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/xsl/current \
222 /usr/share/sgml/docbook/xml-dtd-4.5 \