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 $PATH.
76 This however is less efficient than running an installed git, as
77 you always need an extra fork+exec to run any git subcommand.
79 It is still possible to use git without installing by setting a few
80 environment variables, which was the way this was done
81 traditionally. But using git found in bin-wrappers directory in
82 the build directory is far simpler. As a historical reference, the
83 old way went like this:
87 GITPERLLIB=`pwd`/perl/build/lib
88 export GIT_EXEC_PATH PATH GITPERLLIB
90 - By default (unless NO_PERL is provided) Git will ship various perl
91 scripts. However, for simplicity it doesn't use the
92 ExtUtils::MakeMaker toolchain to decide where to place the perl
93 libraries. Depending on the system this can result in the perl
94 libraries not being where you'd like them if they're expected to be
95 used by things other than Git itself.
97 Manually supplying a perllibdir prefix should fix this, if this is
98 a problem you care about, e.g.:
100 prefix=/usr perllibdir=/usr/$(/usr/bin/perl -MConfig -wle 'print substr $Config{installsitelib}, 1 + length $Config{siteprefixexp}')
102 Will result in e.g. perllibdir=/usr/share/perl/5.26.1 on Debian,
103 perllibdir=/usr/share/perl5 (which we'd use by default) on CentOS.
105 - Unless NO_PERL is provided Git will ship various perl libraries it
106 needs. Distributors of Git will usually want to set
107 NO_PERL_CPAN_FALLBACKS if NO_PERL is not provided to use their own
108 copies of the CPAN modules Git needs.
110 - Git is reasonably self-sufficient, but does depend on a few external
111 programs and libraries. Git can be used without most of them by adding
112 the appropriate "NO_<LIBRARY>=YesPlease" to the make command line or
115 - "zlib", the compression library. Git won't build without it.
117 - "ssh" is used to push and pull over the net.
119 - A POSIX-compliant shell is required to run some scripts needed
120 for everyday use (e.g. "bisect", "request-pull").
122 - "Perl" version 5.8 or later is needed to use some of the
123 features (e.g. preparing a partial commit using "git add -i/-p",
124 interacting with svn repositories with "git svn"). If you can
125 live without these, use NO_PERL. Note that recent releases of
126 Redhat/Fedora are reported to ship Perl binary package with some
127 core modules stripped away (see http://lwn.net/Articles/477234/),
128 so you might need to install additional packages other than Perl
129 itself, e.g. Digest::MD5, File::Spec, File::Temp, Net::Domain,
130 Net::SMTP, and Time::HiRes.
132 - git-imap-send needs the OpenSSL library to talk IMAP over SSL if
133 you are using libcurl older than 7.34.0. Otherwise you can use
134 NO_OPENSSL without losing git-imap-send.
136 - "libcurl" library is used for fetching and pushing
137 repositories over http:// or https://, as well as by
138 git-imap-send if the curl version is >= 7.34.0. If you do
139 not need that functionality, use NO_CURL to build without
142 Git requires version "7.19.4" or later of "libcurl" to build
143 without NO_CURL. This version requirement may be bumped in
146 - "expat" library; git-http-push uses it for remote lock
147 management over DAV. Similar to "curl" above, this is optional
150 - "wish", the Tcl/Tk windowing shell is used in gitk to show the
151 history graphically, and in git-gui. If you don't want gitk or
152 git-gui, you can use NO_TCLTK.
154 - A gettext library is used by default for localizing Git. The
155 primary target is GNU libintl, but the Solaris gettext
156 implementation also works.
158 We need a gettext.h on the system for C code, gettext.sh (or
159 Solaris gettext(1)) for shell scripts, and libintl-perl for Perl
162 Set NO_GETTEXT to disable localization support and make Git only
163 use English. Under autoconf the configure script will do this
164 automatically if it can't find libintl on the system.
166 - Python version 2.7 or later is needed to use the git-p4 interface
169 - Some platform specific issues are dealt with Makefile rules,
170 but depending on your specific installation, you may not
171 have all the libraries/tools needed, or you may have
172 necessary libraries at unusual locations. Please look at the
173 top of the Makefile to see what can be adjusted for your needs.
174 You can place local settings in config.mak and the Makefile
175 will include them. Note that config.mak is not distributed;
176 the name is reserved for local settings.
178 - To build and install documentation suite, you need to have
179 the asciidoc/xmlto toolchain. Because not many people are
180 inclined to install the tools, the default build target
181 ("make all") does _not_ build them.
183 "make doc" builds documentation in man and html formats; there are
184 also "make man", "make html" and "make info". Note that "make html"
185 requires asciidoc, but not xmlto. "make man" (and thus make doc)
188 "make install-doc" installs documentation in man format only; there
189 are also "make install-man", "make install-html" and "make
192 Building and installing the info file additionally requires
193 makeinfo and docbook2X. Version 0.8.3 is known to work.
195 Building and installing the pdf file additionally requires
196 dblatex. Version >= 0.2.7 is known to work.
198 All formats require at least asciidoc 8.4.1. Alternatively, you can
199 use Asciidoctor (requires Ruby) by passing USE_ASCIIDOCTOR=YesPlease
200 to make. You need at least Asciidoctor version 1.5.
202 There are also "make quick-install-doc", "make quick-install-man"
203 and "make quick-install-html" which install preformatted man pages
204 and html documentation. To use these build targets, you need to
205 clone two separate git-htmldocs and git-manpages repositories next
206 to the clone of git itself.
208 The minimum supported version of docbook-xsl is 1.74.
210 Users attempting to build the documentation on Cygwin may need to ensure
211 that the /etc/xml/catalog file looks something like this:
213 <?xml version="1.0"?>
214 <!DOCTYPE catalog PUBLIC
215 "-//OASIS//DTD Entity Resolution XML Catalog V1.0//EN"
216 "http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/entity/release/1.0/catalog.dtd"
218 <catalog xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:entity:xmlns:xml:catalog">
220 uriStartString = "http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current"
221 rewritePrefix = "/usr/share/sgml/docbook/xsl-stylesheets"
224 uriStartString="http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5"
225 rewritePrefix="/usr/share/sgml/docbook/xml-dtd-4.5"
229 This can be achieved with the following two xmlcatalog commands:
233 http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current \
234 /usr/share/sgml/docbook/xsl-stylesheets \
239 http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/xsl/current \
240 /usr/share/sgml/docbook/xml-dtd-4.5 \