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. Note that recent releases of
87 Redhat/Fedora are reported to ship Perl binary package with some
88 core modules stripped away (see http://lwn.net/Articles/477234/),
89 so you might need to install additional packages other than Perl
90 itself, e.g. Time::HiRes.
92 - "openssl" library is used by git-imap-send to use IMAP over SSL.
93 If you don't need it, use NO_OPENSSL.
95 By default, git uses OpenSSL for SHA1 but it will use it's own
96 library (inspired by Mozilla's) with either NO_OPENSSL or
97 BLK_SHA1. Also included is a version optimized for PowerPC
100 - "libcurl" library is used by git-http-fetch and git-fetch. You
101 might also want the "curl" executable for debugging purposes.
102 If you do not use http:// or https:// repositories, you do not
103 have to have them (use NO_CURL).
105 - "expat" library; git-http-push uses it for remote lock
106 management over DAV. Similar to "curl" above, this is optional
109 - "wish", the Tcl/Tk windowing shell is used in gitk to show the
110 history graphically, and in git-gui. If you don't want gitk or
111 git-gui, you can use NO_TCLTK.
113 - A gettext library is used by default for localizing Git. The
114 primary target is GNU libintl, but the Solaris gettext
115 implementation also works.
117 We need a gettext.h on the system for C code, gettext.sh (or
118 Solaris gettext(1)) for shell scripts, and libintl-perl for Perl
121 Set NO_GETTEXT to disable localization support and make Git only
122 use English. Under autoconf the configure script will do this
123 automatically if it can't find libintl on the system.
125 - Some platform specific issues are dealt with Makefile rules,
126 but depending on your specific installation, you may not
127 have all the libraries/tools needed, or you may have
128 necessary libraries at unusual locations. Please look at the
129 top of the Makefile to see what can be adjusted for your needs.
130 You can place local settings in config.mak and the Makefile
131 will include them. Note that config.mak is not distributed;
132 the name is reserved for local settings.
134 - To build and install documentation suite, you need to have
135 the asciidoc/xmlto toolchain. Because not many people are
136 inclined to install the tools, the default build target
137 ("make all") does _not_ build them.
139 "make doc" builds documentation in man and html formats; there are
140 also "make man", "make html" and "make info". Note that "make html"
141 requires asciidoc, but not xmlto. "make man" (and thus make doc)
144 "make install-doc" installs documentation in man format only; there
145 are also "make install-man", "make install-html" and "make
148 Building and installing the info file additionally requires
149 makeinfo and docbook2X. Version 0.8.3 is known to work.
151 Building and installing the pdf file additionally requires
152 dblatex. Version 0.2.7 with asciidoc >= 8.2.7 is known to work.
154 The documentation is written for AsciiDoc 7, but by default
155 uses some compatibility wrappers to work on AsciiDoc 8. If you have
156 AsciiDoc 7, try "make ASCIIDOC7=YesPlease".
158 There are also "make quick-install-doc", "make quick-install-man"
159 and "make quick-install-html" which install preformatted man pages
160 and html documentation. To use these build targets, you need to
161 clone two separate git-htmldocs and git-manpages repositories next
162 to the clone of git itself.
164 It has been reported that docbook-xsl version 1.72 and 1.73 are
165 buggy; 1.72 misformats manual pages for callouts, and 1.73 needs
166 the patch in contrib/patches/docbook-xsl-manpages-charmap.patch
168 Users attempting to build the documentation on Cygwin may need to ensure
169 that the /etc/xml/catalog file looks something like this:
171 <?xml version="1.0"?>
172 <!DOCTYPE catalog PUBLIC
173 "-//OASIS//DTD Entity Resolution XML Catalog V1.0//EN"
174 "http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/entity/release/1.0/catalog.dtd"
176 <catalog xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:entity:xmlns:xml:catalog">
178 uriStartString = "http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current"
179 rewritePrefix = "/usr/share/sgml/docbook/xsl-stylesheets"
182 uriStartString="http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5"
183 rewritePrefix="/usr/share/sgml/docbook/xml-dtd-4.5"
187 This can be achieved with the following two xmlcatalog commands:
191 http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current \
192 /usr/share/sgml/docbook/xsl-stylesheets \
197 http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/xsl/current \
198 /usr/share/sgml/docbook/xml-dtd-4.5 \