INSTALL: document a simpler way to run uninstalled builds
The new scripts automatically saved in the bin-wrappers directory allow you to run a build when you have neither installed git nor tweaked environment variables. Mention this in INSTALL, along with the slight performance issue of doing so. This can be especially handy for manually testing network-invoked git (from ssh, web servers, or similar), but it is also handy with a plain command prompt. Signed-off-by: Matthew Ogilvie <mmogilvi_git@miniinfo.net> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Matthew Ogilvie committed
Dec 2, 2009 at 22:14 UTC
904580122b5ac46a9a38e20b9cc032951d9e7982
1 file changed
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INSTALL
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@@ -38,13 +38,17 @@ Issues of note:
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Interactive Tools package still can install "git", but you can build it
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with --disable-transition option to avoid this.
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- - You can use git after building but without installing if you
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- wanted to. Various git commands need to find other git
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- commands and scripts to do their work, so you would need to
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- arrange a few environment variables to tell them that their
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- friends will be found in your built source area instead of at
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- their standard installation area. Something like this works
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- for me:
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+ - You can use git after building but without installing if you want
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+ to test drive it. Simply run git found in bin-wrappers directory
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+ in the build directory, or prepend that directory to your $PATH.
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+ This however is less efficient than running an installed git, as
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+ you always need an extra fork+exec to run any git subcommand.
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+
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+ It is still possible to use git without installing by setting a few
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+ environment variables, which was the way this was done
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+ traditionally. But using git found in bin-wrappers directory in
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+ the build directory is far simpler. As a historical reference, the
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+ old way went like this:
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GIT_EXEC_PATH=`pwd`
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PATH=`pwd`:$PATH