libgit2 - the Git linkable library

libgit2 is a portable, pure C implementation of the Git core methods provided as a re-entrant linkable library with a solid API, allowing you to write native speed custom Git applications in any language with bindings.

libgit2 is licensed under a very permissive license (GPLv2 with a special Linking Exception). This basically means that you can link it (unmodified) with any kind of software without having to release its source code.

• Website: http://libgit2.github.com
• StackOverflow Tag: libgit2
• Issues: https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2/issues
• API documentation: http://libgit2.github.com/libgit2
• IRC: #libgit2 on irc.freenode.net.
• Mailing list: The libgit2 mailing list was traditionally hosted in Librelist but has been deprecated. We encourage you to use StackOverflow instead for any questions regarding the library, or open an issue on GitHub for bug reports. The mailing list archives are still available at http://librelist.com/browser/libgit2/.

What It Can Do

libgit2 is already very usable and is being used in production for many applications including the GitHub.com site, in Plastic SCM and also powering Microsoft’s Visual Studio tools for Git. The library provides:

• SHA conversions, formatting and shortening
• abstracted ODB backend system
• commit, tag, tree and blob parsing, editing, and write-back
• tree traversal
• revision walking
• index file (staging area) manipulation
• reference management (including packed references)
• config file management
• high level repository management
• thread safety and reentrancy
• descriptive and detailed error messages
• …and more (over 175 different API calls)

Building libgit2 - Using CMake

libgit2 builds cleanly on most platforms without any external dependencies. Under Unix-like systems, like Linux, *BSD and Mac OS X, libgit2 expects pthreads to be available; they should be installed by default on all systems. Under Windows, libgit2 uses the native Windows API for threading.

The libgit2 library is built using CMake 2.6+ (http://www.cmake.org) on all platforms.

On most systems you can build the library using the following commands

$ mkdir build && cd build
$ cmake ..
$ cmake --build .

Alternatively you can point the CMake GUI tool to the CMakeLists.txt file and generate platform specific build project or IDE workspace.

To install the library you can specify the install prefix by setting:

$ cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/install/prefix
$ cmake --build . --target install

For more advanced use or questions about CMake please read http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_FAQ.

The following CMake variables are declared:

• BIN_INSTALL_DIR: Where to install binaries to.
• LIB_INSTALL_DIR: Where to install libraries to.
• INCLUDE_INSTALL_DIR: Where to install headers to.
• BUILD_SHARED_LIBS: Build libgit2 as a Shared Library (defaults to ON)
• BUILD_CLAR: Build Clar-based test suite (defaults to ON)
• THREADSAFE: Build libgit2 with threading support (defaults to OFF)
• STDCALL: Build libgit2 as stdcall. Turn off for cdecl (Windows; defaults to ON)

Compiler and linker options

CMake lets you specify a few variables to control the behavior of the compiler and linker. These flags are rarely used but can be useful for 64-bit to 32-bit cross-compilation.

• CMAKE_C_FLAGS: Set your own compiler flags
• CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH: Override the search path for libraries
• ZLIB_LIBRARY, OPENSSL_SSL_LIBRARY AND OPENSSL_CRYPTO_LIBRARY: Tell CMake where to find those specific libraries

MacOS X

If you want to build a universal binary for Mac OS X, CMake sets it all up for you if you use -DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES="i386;x86_64" when configuring.

Windows

You need to run the CMake commands from the Visual Studio command prompt, not the regular or Windows SDK one. Select the right generator for your version with the -G "Visual Studio X" option. See [the wiki] (https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2/wiki/Building-libgit2-on-Windows) for more detailed instructions. Android ------- Extract toolchain from NDK using,make-standalone-toolchain.shscript. Optionaly, crosscompile and install OpenSSL inside of it. Then create CMake toolchain file that configures paths to your crosscompiler (substitude{PATH}with full path to the toolchain): SET(CMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME Linux) SET(CMAKE_SYSTEM_VERSION Android) SET(CMAKE_C_COMPILER {PATH}/bin/arm-linux-androideabi-gcc) SET(CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER {PATH}/bin/arm-linux-androideabi-g++) SET(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH {PATH}/sysroot/) SET(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_PROGRAM NEVER) SET(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_LIBRARY ONLY) SET(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_INCLUDE ONLY) Add-DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE={pathToToolchainFile} -DANDROID=1` to cmake command when configuring. Language Bindings ================================== Here are the bindings to libgit2 that are currently available: C++ libqgit2, Qt bindings https://projects.kde.org/projects/playground/libs/libqgit2/ Chicken Scheme chicken-git https://wiki.call-cc.org/egg/git D dlibgit https://github.com/AndrejMitrovic/dlibgit Delphi GitForDelphi https://github.com/libgit2/GitForDelphi Erlang Geef https://github.com/carlosmn/geef Go git2go https://github.com/libgit2/git2go GObject libgit2-glib https://live.gnome.org/Libgit2-glib Haskell hgit2 https://github.com/fpco/gitlib Lua luagit2 https://github.com/libgit2/luagit2 .NET libgit2sharp https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2sharp libgit2net, low level bindings superceeded by libgit2sharp https://github.com/txdv/libgit2net Node.js node-gitteh https://github.com/libgit2/node-gitteh nodegit https://github.com/tbranyen/nodegit Objective-C objective-git https://github.com/libgit2/objective-git OCaml libgit2-ocaml https://github.com/burdges/libgit2-ocaml Parrot Virtual Machine parrot-libgit2 https://github.com/letolabs/parrot-libgit2 Perl Git-Raw https://github.com/ghedo/p5-Git-Raw PHP php-git https://github.com/libgit2/php-git Python pygit2 https://github.com/libgit2/pygit2 Ruby Rugged https://github.com/libgit2/rugged Vala libgit2.vapi https://github.com/apmasell/vapis/blob/master/libgit2.vapi If you start another language binding to libgit2, please let us know so we can add it to the list. How Can I Contribute? ================================== Check the contribution guidelines. License ================================== libgit2 is under GPL2 with linking exemption. This means you can link to the library with any program, commercial, open source or other. However, you cannot modify libgit2 and distribute it without supplying the source. See the COPYING file for the full license text.