Git - Wikipedia

Distributed version control software system For other uses, see Git (disambiguation). Not to be confused with GitHub, GitLab, or Gitea. Git

A command-line session showing repository creation, addition of a file, and remote synchronization
Original author(s)	Linus Torvalds[1]
Developer(s)	Junio Hamano and others[2]
Initial release	7 April 2005; 19 years ago (2005-04-07)
Stable release	2.47.1[3]  / 25 November 2024
Repository	git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git
Written in	Primarily in C, with GUI and programming scripts written in Shell script, Perl, Tcl and Python[4][5]
Operating system	POSIX (Linux, macOS, Solaris, AIX), Windows
Available in	English
Type	Version control
License	GPL-2.0-only[i][7]
Website	git-scm.com

Git (/ɡɪt/)[8] is a distributed version control system[9] that tracks versions of files. It is often used to control source code by programmers who are developing software collaboratively.

Design goals of Git include speed, data integrity, and support for distributed, non-linear workflows — thousands of parallel branches running on different computers.[10][11][12]

Git was originally created by Linus Torvalds for version control during the development of the Linux kernel.[13]

As with most other distributed version control systems, and unlike most client–server systems, Git maintains a local copy of the entire repository, a.k.a. repo, with history and version-tracking abilities, independent of network access or a central server. A repo is stored on each computer in a standard directory with additional, hidden files to provide version control capabilities.[14] Git provides features to synchronize changes between repos that share history; copied (cloned) from each other. For collaboration, Git supports synchronizing with repos on remote machines. Although all repos (with the same history) are peers, developers often use a central server to host a repo to hold an integrated copy.

Git is a free and open-source software shared under the GPL-2.0-only license.

The trademark "Git" is registered by the Software Freedom Conservancy, marking its official recognition and continued evolution in the open-source community.

Today, Git is the de facto standard version control system. It is the most popular distributed version control system, with nearly 95% of developers reporting it as their primary version control system as of 2022.[15] It is the most widely used source-code management tool among professional developers. There are offerings of Git repository services, including GitHub, SourceForge, Bitbucket and GitLab.[16][17][18][19][20]

History

[edit]

Torvalds started developing Git in April 2005 after the free license for BitKeeper, the proprietary source-control management (SCM) system used for Linux kernel development since 2002, was revoked for Linux.[21][22] The copyright holder of BitKeeper, Larry McVoy, claimed that Andrew Tridgell had created SourcePuller by reverse engineering the BitKeeper protocols.[23] The same incident also spurred the creation of Mercurial, another version-control system.

Torvalds wanted a distributed system that he could use like BitKeeper, but none of the available free systems met his needs. He cited an example of a source-control management system needing 30 seconds to apply a patch and update all associated metadata, and noted that this would not scale to the needs of Linux kernel development, where synchronizing with fellow maintainers could require 250 such actions at once. For his design criterion, he specified that patching should take no more than three seconds, and added three more goals:[10]

• Take the Concurrent Versions System (CVS) as an example of what not to do; if in doubt, make the exact opposite decision.[12]
• Support a distributed, BitKeeper-like workflow.[12]
• Include very strong safeguards against corruption, either accidental or malicious.[11]

These criteria eliminated every version-control system in use at the time, so immediately after the 2.6.12-rc2 Linux kernel development release, Torvalds set out to write his own.[12]

The development of Git began on 3 April 2005.[24] Torvalds announced the project on 6 April and became self-hosting the next day.[24][25] The first merge of multiple branches took place on 18 April.[26] Torvalds achieved his performance goals; on 29 April, the nascent Git was benchmarked recording patches to the Linux kernel tree at a rate of 6.7 patches per second.[27] On 16 June, Git managed the kernel 2.6.12 release.[28]

Torvalds turned over maintenance on 26 July 2005 to Junio Hamano, a major contributor to the project.[29] Hamano was responsible for the 1.0 release on 21 December 2005.[30]

Naming

[edit]

Torvalds sarcastically quipped about the name git (which means "unpleasant person" in British English slang): "I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First 'Linux', now 'git'."[31][32] The man page describes Git as "the stupid content tracker".[33]

The read-me file of the source code elaborates further:[34]

"git" can mean anything, depending on your mood.

• Random three-letter combination that is pronounceable, and not actually used by any common UNIX command. The fact that it is a mispronunciation of "get" may or may not be relevant.
• Stupid. Contemptible and despicable. Simple. Take your pick from the dictionary of slang.
• "Global information tracker": you're in a good mood, and it actually works for you. Angels sing, and a light suddenly fills the room.
• "Goddamn idiotic truckload of sh*t": when it breaks.

The source code for Git refers to the program as "the information manager from hell".

Characteristics

[edit]

Design

[edit]

Git's design is a synthesis of Torvalds's experience with Linux in maintaining a large distributed development project, along with his intimate knowledge of file-system performance gained from the same project and the urgent need to produce a working system in short order. These influences led to the following implementation choices:[13]

Strong support for non-linear development Git supports rapid branching and merging, and includes specific tools for visualizing and navigating a non-linear development history. In Git, a core assumption is that a change will be merged more often than it is written, as it is passed around to various reviewers. In Git, branches are very lightweight: a branch is only a reference to one commit. Distributed development Like Darcs, BitKeeper, Mercurial, Bazaar, and Monotone, Git gives each developer a local copy of the full development history, and changes are copied from one such repository to another. These changes are imported as added development branches and can be merged in the same way as a locally developed branch.[35] Compatibility with existing systems and protocols Repositories can be published via Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), or a Git protocol over either a plain socket or Secure Shell (ssh). Git also has a CVS server emulation, which enables the use of existing CVS clients and IDE plugins to access Git repositories. Subversion repositories can be used directly with git-svn.[36] Efficient handling of large projects Torvalds has described Git as being very fast and scalable,[37] and performance tests done by Mozilla[38] showed that it was an order of magnitude faster diffing large repositories than Mercurial and GNU Bazaar; fetching version history from a locally stored repository can be one hundred times faster than fetching it from the remote server.[39] Cryptographic authentication of history The Git history is stored in such a way that the ID of a particular version (a commit in Git terms) depends upon the complete development history leading up to that commit. Once it is published, it is not possible to change the old versions without it being noticed. The structure is similar to a Merkle tree, but with added data at the nodes and leaves.[40] (Mercurial and Monotone also have this property.) Toolkit-based design Git was designed as a set of programs written in C and several shell scripts that provide wrappers around those programs.[41] Although most of those scripts have since been rewritten in C for speed and portability, the design remains, and it is easy to chain the components together.[42] Pluggable merge strategies As part of its toolkit design, Git has a well-defined model of an incomplete merge, and it has multiple algorithms for completing it, culminating in telling the user that it is unable to complete the merge automatically and that manual editing is needed.[43] Garbage accumulates until collected Aborting operations or backing out changes will leave useless dangling objects in the database. These are generally a small fraction of the continuously growing history of wanted objects. Git will automatically perform garbage collection when enough loose objects have been created in the repository. Garbage collection can be called explicitly using git gc.[44][45] Periodic explicit object packing Git stores each newly created object as a separate file. Although individually compressed, this takes up a great deal of space and is inefficient. This is solved by the use of packs that store a large number of objects delta-compressed among themselves in one file (or network byte stream) called a packfile. Packs are compressed using the heuristic that files with the same name are probably similar, without depending on this for correctness. A corresponding index file is created for each packfile, recording the offset of each object in the packfile. Newly created objects (with newly added history) are still stored as single objects, and periodic repacking is needed to maintain space efficiency. The process of packing the repository can be very computationally costly. By allowing objects to exist in the repository in a loose but quickly generated format, Git allows the costly pack operation to be deferred until later, when time matters less, e.g., the end of a workday. Git does periodic repacking automatically, but manual repacking is also possible with the git gc command.[46] For data integrity, both the packfile and its index have an SHA-1 checksum[47] inside, and the file name of the packfile also contains an SHA-1 checksum. To check the integrity of a repository, run the git fsck command.[48][49]

Another property of Git is that it snapshots directory trees of files. The earliest systems for tracking versions of source code, Source Code Control System (SCCS) and Revision Control System (RCS), worked on individual files and emphasized the space savings to be gained from interleaved deltas (SCCS) or delta encoding (RCS) the (mostly similar) versions. Later revision-control systems maintained this notion of a file having an identity across multiple revisions of a project. However, Torvalds rejected this concept.[50] Consequently, Git does not explicitly record file revision relationships at any level below the source-code tree.

Downsides

[edit]

These implicit revision relationships have some significant consequences:

• It is slightly more costly to examine the change history of one file than the whole project.[51] To obtain a history of changes affecting a given file, Git must walk the global history and then determine whether each change modified that file. This method of examining history does, however, let Git produce with equal efficiency a single history showing the changes to an arbitrary set of files. For example, a subdirectory of the source tree plus an associated global header file is a very common case.
• Renames are handled implicitly rather than explicitly. A common complaint with CVS is that it uses the name of a file to identify its revision history, so moving or renaming a file is not possible without either interrupting its history or renaming the history and thereby making the history inaccurate. Most post-CVS revision-control systems solve this by giving a file a unique long-lived name (analogous to an inode number) that survives renaming. Git does not record such an identifier, and this is claimed as an advantage.[52][53] Source code files are sometimes split or merged, or simply renamed,[54] and recording this as a simple rename would freeze an inaccurate description of what happened in the (immutable) history. Git addresses the issue by detecting renames while browsing the history of snapshots rather than recording it when making the snapshot.[55] (Briefly, given a file in revision N, a file of the same name in revision N − 1 is its default ancestor. However, when there is no like-named file in revision N − 1, Git searches for a file that existed only in revision N − 1 and is very similar to the new file.) However, it does require more CPU-intensive work every time the history is reviewed, and several options to adjust the heuristics are available. This mechanism does not always work; sometimes a file that is renamed with changes in the same commit is read as a deletion of the old file and the creation of a new file. Developers can work around this limitation by committing the rename and the changes separately.

Merging strategies

[edit]

Git implements several merging strategies; a non-default strategy can be selected at merge time:[56]

• resolve: the traditional three-way merge algorithm.
• recursive: This is the default when pulling or merging one branch, and is a variant of the three-way merge algorithm.

  When there are more than one common ancestors that can be used for a three-way merge, it creates a merged tree of the common ancestors and uses that as the reference tree for the three-way merge. This has been reported to result in fewer merge conflicts without causing mis-merges by tests done on prior merge commits taken from Linux 2.6 kernel development history. Also, this can detect and handle merges involving renames.

  — Linus Torvalds[57]

• octopus: This is the default when merging more than two heads.

Data structures

[edit]

Git's primitives are not inherently a source-code management system. Torvalds explains:[58]

In many ways you can just see git as a filesystem—it's content-addressable, and it has a notion of versioning, but I really designed it coming at the problem from the viewpoint of a filesystem person (hey, kernels is what I do), and I actually have absolutely zero interest in creating a traditional SCM system.

From this initial design approach, Git has developed the full set of features expected of a traditional SCM,[59] with features mostly being created as needed, then refined and extended over time.

Git has two data structures: a mutable index (also called stage or cache) that caches information about the working directory and the next revision to be committed; and an object database that stores immutable objects.

The index serves as a connection point between the object database and the working tree.

The object store contains five types of objects:[60][48]

• A blob is the content of a file. Blobs have no proper file name, time stamps, or other metadata (a blob's name internally is a hash of its content). In Git, each blob is a version of a file, in which is the file's data.[61]
• A tree object is the equivalent of a directory. It contains a list of file names,[62] each with some type bits and a reference to a blob or tree object that is that file, symbolic link, or directory's contents. These objects are a snapshot of the source tree. (In whole, this comprises a Merkle tree, meaning that only a single hash for the root tree is sufficient and actually used in commits to precisely pinpoint to the exact state of whole tree structures of any number of sub-directories and files.)
• A commit object links tree objects together into history. It contains the name of a tree object (of the top-level source directory), a timestamp, a log message, and the names of zero or more parent commit objects.[63]
• A tag object is a container that contains a reference to another object and can hold added meta-data related to another object. Most commonly, it is used to store a digital signature of a commit object corresponding to a particular release of the data being tracked by Git.[64]
• A packfile object collects various other objects into a zlib-compressed bundle for compactness and ease of transport over network protocols.[65]

Each object is identified by a SHA-1 hash of its contents. Git computes the hash and uses this value for the object's name. The object is put into a directory matching the first two characters of its hash. The rest of the hash is used as the file name for that object.

Git stores each revision of a file as a unique blob. The relationships between the blobs can be found through examining the tree and commit objects. Newly added objects are stored in their entirety using zlib compression. This can consume a large amount of disk space quickly, so objects can be combined into packs, which use delta compression to save space, storing blobs as their changes relative to other blobs.

Additionally, Git stores labels called refs (short for references) to indicate the locations of various commits. They are stored in the reference database and are respectively:[66]

• Heads (branches): Named references that are advanced automatically to the new commit when a commit is made on top of them.
• HEAD: A reserved head that will be compared against the working tree to create a commit.
• Tags: Like branch references, but fixed to a particular commit. Used to label important points in history.

Commands

[edit]

Frequently used commands for Git's command-line interface include:[67][68]

• git init, which is used to create a git repository.
• git clone [URL], which clones, or duplicates, a git repository from an external URL.
• git add [file], which adds a file to git's working directory (files about to be committed).
• git commit -m [commit message], which commits the files from the current working directory (so they are now part of the repository's history).

A .gitignore file may be created in a Git repository as a plain text file. The files listed in the .gitignore file will not be tracked by Git.[69]: 3–4  This feature can be used to ignore files with keys or passwords, various extraneous files, and large files (which GitHub will refuse to upload).[70]

Git references

[edit]

Every object in the Git database that is not referred to may be cleaned up by using a garbage collection command or automatically. An object may be referenced by another object or an explicit reference. Git has different types of references. The commands to create, move, and delete references vary. git show-ref lists all references. Some types are:

• heads: refers to an object locally,
• remotes: refers to an object which exists in a remote repository,
• stash: refers to an object not yet committed,
• meta: e.g., a configuration in a bare repository, user rights; the refs/meta/config namespace was introduced retrospectively, gets used by Gerrit,[71]
• tags: see above.

Implementations

[edit]

Git (the main implementation in C) is primarily developed on Linux, although it also supports most major operating systems, including the BSDs (DragonFly BSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD), Solaris, macOS, and Windows.[72][73]

The first Windows port of Git was primarily a Linux-emulation framework that hosts the Linux version. Installing Git under Windows creates a similarly named Program Files directory containing the Mingw-w64 port of the GNU Compiler Collection, Perl 5, MSYS2 (itself a fork of Cygwin, a Unix-like emulation environment for Windows) and various other Windows ports or emulations of Linux utilities and libraries. Currently, native Windows builds of Git are distributed as 32- and 64-bit installers.[74] The git official website currently maintains a build of Git for Windows, still using the MSYS2 environment.[75]

The JGit implementation of Git is a pure Java software library, designed to be embedded in any Java application. JGit is used in the Gerrit code-review tool, and in EGit, a Git client for the Eclipse IDE.[76]

Go-git is an open-source implementation of Git written in pure Go.[77] It is currently used for backing projects as a SQL interface for Git code repositories[78] and providing encryption for Git.[79]

Dulwich is an implementation of Git written in pure Python with support for CPython 3.6 and later and Pypy.[80]

The libgit2 implementation of Git is an ANSI C software library with no other dependencies, which can be built on multiple platforms, including Windows, Linux, macOS, and BSD.[81] It has bindings for many programming languages, including Ruby, Python, and Haskell.[82][83][84]

JS-Git is a JavaScript implementation of a subset of Git.[85]

GameOfTrees is an open-source implementation of Git for the OpenBSD project.[86]

Git server

[edit]

As Git is a distributed version control system, it could be used as a server out of the box. It is shipped with a built-in command git daemon which starts a simple TCP server running on the Git protocol.[87][88] Dedicated Git HTTP servers help (amongst other features) by adding access control, displaying the contents of a Git repository via the web interfaces, and managing multiple repositories. Already existing Git repositories can be cloned and shared to be used by others as a centralized repo. It can also be accessed via remote shell just by having the Git software installed and allowing a user to log in.[89] Git servers typically listen on TCP port 9418.[90]

Open source

[edit]

• Hosting the Git server using the Git Binary.[91]
• Gerrit, a Git server configurable to support code reviews and provide access via ssh, an integrated Apache MINA or OpenSSH, or an integrated Jetty web server. Gerrit provides integration for LDAP, Active Directory, OpenID, OAuth, Kerberos/GSSAPI, X509 https client certificates. With Gerrit 3.0 all configurations will be stored as Git repositories, and no database is required to run. Gerrit has a pull-request feature implemented in its core but lacks a GUI for it.
• Phabricator, a spin-off from Facebook. As Facebook primarily uses Mercurial, Git support is not as prominent.[92]
• RhodeCode Community Edition (CE), supporting Git, Mercurial and Subversion with an AGPLv3 license.
• Kallithea, supporting both Git and Mercurial, developed in Python with GPL license.
• External projects like gitolite,[93] which provide scripts on top of Git software to provide fine-grained access control.
• There are several other FLOSS solutions for self-hosting, including Gogs,[94] Gitea, a fork of Gogs, as well as Forgejo, which is, in turn, a fork of Gitea. Gogs, as well as the two aforementioned derivatives of it, is developed using the Go language. All three solutions are made available under the MIT license.

Git server as a service

[edit] See also: Comparison of source-code-hosting facilities

There are many offerings of Git repositories as a service. The most popular are GitHub, SourceForge, Bitbucket and GitLab.[95][17][18][19][20]

Graphical interfaces

[edit]

This section has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This section needs expansion with: more clients and details like features. You can help by adding to it. (June 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Git, a powerful version control system, can be daunting with its command-line interface. Git GUI clients offer a graphical user interface (GUI) to simplify interaction with Git repositories.

These GUIs provide visual representations of your project's history, including branches, commits, and file changes. They also streamline actions like staging changes, creating commits, and managing branches. Visual diff tools help resolve merge conflicts arising from concurrent development.

Git comes with a Tcl/Tk GUI, which allows users to perform actions such as creating and amending commits, creating and merging branches, and interacting with remote repositories. [96]

In addition to the official GUI, many 3rd party interfaces exist that provide similar features to the official GUI distributed with Git, such as GitHub Desktop, SourceTree, and TortoiseGit.[97]

GUI clients make Git easier to learn and use, improving workflow efficiency and reducing errors. Popular options include cross-platform GitKraken Desktop (freemium) and Sourcetree (free/paid), or platform-specific choices like GitHub Desktop (free) for Windows/macOS and TortoiseGit (free) for Windows.

List of GUI Clients

[edit]

While Git provides built-in GUI tools (git-gui, gitk), a wider range of third-party options cater to platform-specific user preferences.

Windows GUIs (GNU GPL/MIT and Free)

[edit]

• GitHub Desktop
• SourceTree
• TortoiseGit
• Git Extensions
• gitg
• MeGit (based on EGit)
• GitUI

Mac GUIs (GNU GPL/MIT and Free)

[edit]

• GitHub Desktop
• SourceTree

Linux GUIs (GNU GPL/MIT and Free)

[edit]

• gitg
• MeGit (based on EGit)
• GitUI
• giggle

Proprietary GIT GUI

[edit]

• SmartGit (Windows, Linux, Mac)
• GitKraken Desktop (Windows, Linux, Mac)
• Glint (Windows, Linux, Mac)
• Git Tower (Windows, Mac)
• SourceTree (Windows, Mac)

Adoption

[edit]

The Eclipse Foundation reported in its annual community survey that as of May 2014, Git is now the most widely used source-code management tool, with 42.9% of professional software developers reporting that they use Git as their primary source-control system[98] compared with 36.3% in 2013, 32% in 2012; or for Git responses excluding use of GitHub: 33.3% in 2014, 30.3% in 2013, 27.6% in 2012 and 12.8% in 2011.[99] Open-source directory Black Duck Open Hub reports a similar uptake among open-source projects.[100]

Stack Overflow has included version control in their annual developer survey[101] in 2015 (16,694 responses),[102] 2017 (30,730 responses),[103] 2018 (74,298 responses)[104] and 2022 (71,379 responses).[15] Git was the overwhelming favorite of responding developers in these surveys, reporting as high as 93.9% in 2022.

Version control systems used by responding developers:

Name	2015	2017	2018	2022
Git	69.3%	69.2%	87.2%	93.9%
Subversion	36.9%	9.1%	16.1%	5.2%
TFVC	12.2%	7.3%	10.9%	[ii]
Mercurial	7.9%	1.9%	3.6%	1.1%
CVS	4.2%	[ii]	[ii]	[ii]
Perforce	3.3%	[ii]	[ii]	[ii]
VSS	[ii]	0.6%	[ii]	[ii]
IBM DevOps Code ClearCase	[ii]	0.4%	[ii]	[ii]
Zip file backups	[ii]	2.0%	7.9%	[ii]
Raw network sharing	[ii]	1.7%	7.9%	[ii]
Other	5.8%	3.0%	[ii]	[ii]
None	9.3%	4.8%	4.8%	4.3%

The UK IT jobs website itjobswatch.co.uk reports that as of late September 2016, 29.27% of UK permanent software development job openings have cited Git,[105] ahead of 12.17% for Microsoft Team Foundation Server,[106] 10.60% for Subversion,[107] 1.30% for Mercurial,[108] and 0.48% for Visual SourceSafe.[109]

Extensions

[edit]

There are many Git extensions, like Git LFS, which started as an extension to Git in the GitHub community and is now widely used by other repositories. Extensions are usually independently developed and maintained by different people, but at some point in the future, a widely used extension can be merged with Git.

Other open-source Git extensions include:

• git-annex, a distributed file synchronization system based on Git
• git-flow, a set of Git extensions to provide high-level repository operations for Vincent Driessen's branching model
• git-machete, a repository organizer & tool for automating rebase/merge/pull/push operations

Microsoft developed the Virtual File System for Git (VFS for Git; formerly Git Virtual File System or GVFS) extension to handle the size of the Windows source-code tree as part of their 2017 migration from Perforce. VFS for Git allows cloned repositories to use placeholders whose contents are downloaded only once a file is accessed.[110]

Conventions

[edit]

Git can be used in a variety of different ways, but some conventions are commonly adopted.

• The command to create a local repo, git init, creates a branch named master.[61][111] Often it is used as the integration branch for merging changes into.[112] Since the default upstream remote is named origin,[113] the default remote branch is origin/master. Some tools such as GitHub and GitLab create a default branch named main instead.[114][115] Also, users can add and delete branches and choose any branch for integrating.
• Pushed commits generally are not overwritten, but are reverted[116] by committing another change which reverses an earlier commit. This prevents shared commits from being invalid because the commit on which they are based does not exist in the remote. If the commits contain sensitive information, they should be removed, which involves a more complex procedure to rewrite history.
• The git-flow[117] workflow and naming conventions are often adopted to distinguish feature-specific unstable histories (feature/*), unstable shared histories (develop), production-ready histories (main), and emergency patches to released products (hotfix).
• A pull request, a.k.a. merge request, is a request by a user to merge a branch into another branch.[118][119] Git does not itself provide for pull requests, but it is a common feature of git cloud services. The underlying function of a pull request is no different than that of an administrator of a repository pulling changes from another remote (the repository that is the source of the pull request). However, the pull request itself is a ticket managed by the hosting server which perform these actions; it is not a feature of git SCM.

Security

[edit]

Git does not provide access-control mechanisms, but was designed for operation with other tools that specialize in access control.[120]

On 17 December 2014, an exploit was found affecting the Windows and macOS versions of the Git client. An attacker could perform arbitrary code execution on a target computer with Git installed by creating a malicious Git tree (directory) named .git (a directory in Git repositories that stores all the data of the repository) in a different case (such as .GIT or .Git, needed because Git does not allow the all-lowercase version of .git to be created manually) with malicious files in the .git/hooks subdirectory (a folder with executable files that Git runs) on a repository that the attacker made or on a repository that the attacker can modify. If a Windows or Mac user pulls (downloads) a version of the repository with the malicious directory, then switches to that directory, the .git directory will be overwritten (due to the case-insensitive trait of the Windows and Mac filesystems) and the malicious executable files in .git/hooks may be run, which results in the attacker's commands being executed. An attacker could also modify the .git/config configuration file, which allows the attacker to create malicious Git aliases (aliases for Git commands or external commands) or modify extant aliases to execute malicious commands when run. The vulnerability was patched in version 2.2.1 of Git, released on 17 December 2014, and announced the next day.[121][122]

Git version 2.6.1, released on 29 September 2015, contained a patch for a security vulnerability (CVE-2015-7545)[123] that allowed arbitrary code execution.[124] The vulnerability was exploitable if an attacker could convince a victim to clone a specific URL, as the arbitrary commands were embedded in the URL itself.[125] An attacker could use the exploit via a man-in-the-middle attack if the connection was unencrypted,[125] as they could redirect the user to a URL of their choice. Recursive clones were also vulnerable since they allowed the controller of a repository to specify arbitrary URLs via the gitmodules file.[125]

Git uses SHA-1 hashes internally. Linus Torvalds has responded that the hash was mostly to guard against accidental corruption, and the security a cryptographically secure hash gives was just an accidental side effect, with the main security being signing elsewhere.[126][127] Since a demonstration of the SHAttered attack against git in 2017, git was modified to use a SHA-1 variant resistant to this attack. A plan for hash function transition is being written since February 2020.[128]

Trademark

[edit]

"Git" is a registered word trademark of Software Freedom Conservancy under US500000085961336 since 2015-02-03.

See also

[edit]

• Comparison of source-code-hosting facilities
• Comparison of version-control software
• List of version-control software

Notes

[edit]

1. ^ GPL-2.0-only since 2005-04-11. Some parts under compatible licenses such as LGPLv2.1.[6]
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Not listed as an option in this survey

Citations

[edit]

1. ^ "Initial revision of "git", the information manager from hell". GitHub. 8 April 2005. Archived from the original on 16 November 2015. Retrieved 20 December 2015.
2. ^ "Commit Graph". GitHub. 8 June 2016. Archived from the original on 20 January 2016. Retrieved 19 December 2015.
3. ^ Junio C Hamano (25 November 2024). "[ANNOUNCE] Git v2.47.1". Retrieved 25 November 2024.
4. ^ "Git website". Archived from the original on 9 June 2022. Retrieved 9 June 2022.
5. ^ "Git Source Code Mirror". GitHub. Archived from the original on 3 June 2022. Retrieved 9 June 2022.
6. ^ "Git's LGPL license at github.com". GitHub. 20 May 2011. Archived from the original on 11 April 2016. Retrieved 12 October 2014.
7. ^ "Git's GPL license at github.com". GitHub. 18 January 2010. Archived from the original on 11 April 2016. Retrieved 12 October 2014.
8. ^ "Tech Talk: Linus Torvalds on git (at 00:01:30)". 14 May 2007. Archived from the original on 20 December 2015. Retrieved 20 July 2014 – via YouTube.
9. ^ Chacon & Straub 2014, pp. 29–31.
10. ^ a b Torvalds, Linus (7 April 2005). "Re: Kernel SCM saga..." linux-kernel (Mailing list). Archived from the original on 1 July 2019. Retrieved 3 February 2017. "So I'm writing some scripts to try to track things a whole lot faster."
11. ^ a b Torvalds, Linus (10 June 2007). "Re: fatal: serious inflate inconsistency". git (Mailing list).
12. ^ a b c d Linus Torvalds (3 May 2007). Google tech talk: Linus Torvalds on git. Event occurs at 02:30. Archived from the original on 28 May 2007. Retrieved 16 May 2007.
13. ^ a b "A Short History of Git". Pro Git (2nd ed.). Apress. 2014. Archived from the original on 25 December 2015. Retrieved 26 December 2015.
14. ^ Chacon, Scott (24 December 2014). Pro Git (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Apress. pp. 29–30. ISBN 978-1-4842-0077-3. Archived from the original on 25 December 2015.
15. ^ a b "Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2022". Stack Overflow. Retrieved 4 August 2022.
16. ^ Krill, Paul (28 September 2016). "Enterprise repo wars: GitHub vs. GitLab vs. Bitbucket". InfoWorld. Retrieved 2 February 2020.
17. ^ a b "github.com Competitive Analysis, Marketing Mix and Traffic". Alexa. Archived from the original on 31 March 2013. Retrieved 2 February 2020.
18. ^ a b "sourceforge.net Competitive Analysis, Marketing Mix and Traffic". Alexa. Archived from the original on 20 October 2020. Retrieved 2 February 2020.
19. ^ a b "bitbucket.org Competitive Analysis, Marketing Mix and Traffic". Alexa. Archived from the original on 23 June 2017. Retrieved 2 February 2020.
20. ^ a b "gitlab.com Competitive Analysis, Marketing Mix and Traffic". Alexa. Archived from the original on 30 November 2017. Retrieved 2 February 2020.
21. ^ Brown, Zack (27 July 2018). "A Git Origin Story". Linux Journal. Linux Journal. Archived from the original on 13 April 2020. Retrieved 28 May 2020.
22. ^ "BitKeeper and Linux: The end of the road?". Linux.com. 11 April 2005. Retrieved 18 May 2023.
23. ^ McAllister, Neil (2 May 2005). "Linus Torvalds' BitKeeper blunder". InfoWorld. Archived from the original on 26 August 2015. Retrieved 8 September 2015.
24. ^ a b Torvalds, Linus (27 February 2007). "Re: Trivia: When did git self-host?". git (Mailing list).
25. ^ Torvalds, Linus (6 April 2005). "Kernel SCM saga." linux-kernel (Mailing list).
26. ^ Torvalds, Linus (17 April 2005). "First ever real kernel git merge!". git (Mailing list).
27. ^ Mackall, Matt (29 April 2005). "Mercurial 0.4b vs git patchbomb benchmark". git (Mailing list).
28. ^ Torvalds, Linus (17 June 2005). "Linux 2.6.12". git-commits-head (Mailing list).
29. ^ Torvalds, Linus (27 July 2005). "Meet the new maintainer." git (Mailing list).
30. ^ Hamano, Junio C. (21 December 2005). "Announce: Git 1.0.0". git (Mailing list).
31. ^ "GitFaq: Why the 'Git' name?". Git.or.cz. Archived from the original on 23 July 2012. Retrieved 14 July 2012.
32. ^ "After controversy, Torvalds begins work on 'git'". PC World. 14 July 2012. Archived from the original on 1 February 2011. Torvalds seemed aware that his decision to drop BitKeeper would also be controversial. When asked why he called the new software, 'git', British slang meaning 'a rotten person', he said. 'I'm an egotistical bastard, so I name all my projects after myself. First Linux, now git.'
33. ^ "git(1) Manual Page". Archived from the original on 21 June 2012. Retrieved 21 July 2012.
34. ^ "Initial revision of 'git', the information manager from hell · git/git@e83c516". GitHub. Archived from the original on 8 October 2017. Retrieved 21 January 2016.
35. ^ "Git – Distributed Workflows". Git. Archived from the original on 22 October 2014. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
36. ^ Gunjal, Siddhesh (19 July 2019). "What is Version Control Tool? Explore Git and GitHub". Medium. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
37. ^ Torvalds, Linus (19 October 2006). "Re: VCS comparison table". git (Mailing list).
38. ^ Jst's Blog on Mozillazine "bzr/hg/git performance". Archived from the original on 29 May 2010. Retrieved 12 February 2015.
39. ^ Dreier, Roland (13 November 2006). "Oh what a relief it is". Archived from the original on 16 January 2009., observing that "git log" is 100x faster than "svn log" because the latter must contact a remote server.
40. ^ "Trust". Git Concepts. Git User's Manual. 18 October 2006. Archived from the original on 22 February 2017.
41. ^ Torvalds, Linus. "Re: VCS comparison table". git (Mailing list). Retrieved 10 April 2009., describing Git's script-oriented design
42. ^ iabervon (22 December 2005). "Git rocks!". Archived from the original on 14 September 2016., praising Git's scriptability.
43. ^ "Git – Git SCM Wiki". git.wiki.kernel.org. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
44. ^ Chacon & Straub 2014.
45. ^ "Git User's Manual". 10 March 2020. Archived from the original on 10 May 2020.
46. ^ Chacon & Straub 2014, p. 499.
47. ^ Chacon & Straub 2014, pp. 33–34.
48. ^ a b "Git – Packfiles". Git.
49. ^ Chacon & Straub 2014, p. 568.
50. ^ Torvalds, Linus (10 April 2005). "Re: more git updates." linux-kernel (Mailing list).
51. ^ Haible, Bruno (11 February 2007). "how to speed up 'git log'?". git (Mailing list).
52. ^ Torvalds, Linus (1 March 2006). "Re: impure renames / history tracking". git (Mailing list).
53. ^ Hamano, Junio C. (24 March 2006). "Re: Errors GITtifying GCC and Binutils". git (Mailing list).
54. ^ Hamano, Junio C. (23 March 2006). "Re: Errors GITtifying GCC and Binutils". git (Mailing list).
55. ^ Torvalds, Linus (28 November 2006). "Re: git and bzr". git (Mailing list)., on using git-blame to show code moved between source files.
56. ^ Torvalds, Linus (18 July 2007). "git-merge(1)". Archived from the original on 16 July 2016.
57. ^ Torvalds, Linus (18 July 2007). "CrissCrossMerge". Archived from the original on 13 January 2006.
58. ^ Torvalds, Linus (10 April 2005). "Re: more git updates..." linux-kernel (Mailing list).
59. ^ Torvalds, Linus (23 March 2006). "Re: Errors GITtifying GCC and Binutils". git (Mailing list). Archived from the original on 22 March 2021. Retrieved 3 February 2017.
60. ^ "Git – Git Objects". Git.
61. ^ a b Chacon & Straub 2014, pp. 81–83.
62. ^ Chacon & Straub 2014, pp. 485–488.
63. ^ Chacon & Straub 2014, pp. 488–490.
64. ^ Chacon & Straub 2014, pp. 495–496.
65. ^ Chacon & Straub 2014, pp. 497–501.
66. ^ "Git – Git References". Git.
67. ^ "Git Cheat Sheet" (PDF). education.github.com. Retrieved 10 June 2024.
68. ^ "Git Tutorial" (PDF). web.stanford.edu. Retrieved 10 June 2024.
69. ^ "Git Quick Intro" (PDF). data-skills.github.io. Retrieved 10 June 2024.
70. ^ Ba Tran, Andrew. "Best practices for uploading to GitHub" (PDF). journalismcourses.org. Retrieved 10 June 2024.
71. ^ "Project Configuration File Format". Gerrit Code Review. Archived from the original on 3 December 2020. Retrieved 2 February 2020.
72. ^ "downloads". Archived from the original on 8 May 2012. Retrieved 14 May 2012.
73. ^ "git package versions – Repology". Archived from the original on 19 January 2022. Retrieved 30 November 2021.
74. ^ "msysGit". GitHub. Archived from the original on 10 October 2016. Retrieved 20 September 2016.
75. ^ "Git – Downloading Package". Git. (source code)
76. ^ "JGit". Archived from the original on 31 August 2012. Retrieved 24 August 2012.
77. ^ "Git – go-git". Git. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
78. ^ "SQL interface to Git repositories, written in Go.", github.com, retrieved 19 April 2019
79. ^ "Keybase launches encrypted git". keybase.io. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
80. ^ "Dulwich GitHub Repository README.md". GitHub. Archived from the original on 29 April 2024. Retrieved 29 April 2024.
81. ^ "libgit2". GitHub. Archived from the original on 11 April 2016. Retrieved 24 August 2012.
82. ^ "rugged". GitHub. Archived from the original on 24 July 2013. Retrieved 24 August 2012.
83. ^ "pygit2". GitHub. Archived from the original on 5 August 2015. Retrieved 24 August 2012.
84. ^ "hlibgit2". Archived from the original on 25 May 2013. Retrieved 30 April 2013.
85. ^ "js-git: a JavaScript implementation of Git". GitHub. Archived from the original on 7 August 2013. Retrieved 13 August 2013.
86. ^ "Game of Trees". gameoftrees.org. Retrieved 10 March 2024.
87. ^ Chacon & Straub 2014, pp. 138–139.
88. ^ "Git – Git Daemon". Git. Retrieved 10 July 2019.
89. ^ 4.4 Git on the Server – Setting Up the Server Archived 22 October 2014 at the Wayback Machine, Pro Git.
90. ^ "1.4 Getting Started – Installing Git". Git. Archived from the original on 2 November 2013. Retrieved 1 November 2013.
91. ^ Chacon, Scott; Straub, Ben (2014). "Git on the Server – Setting Up the Server". Pro Git (2nd ed.). Apress. ISBN 978-1484200773.
92. ^ Diffusion User Guide: Repository Hosting Archived 20 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine.
93. ^ "Gitolite: Hosting Git Repositories".
94. ^ "Gogs: A painless self-hosted Git service".
95. ^ "Highlights from Git 2.26". The GitHub Blog. 22 March 2020. Archived from the original on 22 March 2021. Retrieved 25 November 2020. You may remember when Git introduced a new version of its network fetch protocol way back in 2018. That protocol is now used by default in 2.26, so let's refresh ourselves on what that means. The biggest problem with the old protocol is that the server would immediately list all of the branches, tags, and other references in the repository before the client had a chance to send anything. For some repositories, this could mean sending megabytes of extra data, when the client really only wanted to know about the master branch. The new protocol starts with the client request and provides a way for the client to tell the server which references it's interested in. Fetching a single branch will only ask about that branch, while most clones will only ask about branches and tags. This might seem like everything, but server repositories may store other references (such as the head of every pull request opened in the repository since its creation). Now, fetches from large repositories improve in speed, especially when the fetch itself is small, which makes the cost of the initial reference advertisement more expensive relatively speaking. And the best part is that you won't need to do anything! Due to some clever design, any client that speaks the new protocol can work seamlessly with both old and new servers, falling back to the original protocol if the server doesn't support it. The only reason for the delay between introducing the protocol and making it the default was to let early adopters discover any bugs.
96. ^ "Git - git-gui Documentation". Git. Retrieved 1 July 2024.
97. ^ "Git - GUI Clients". Git. Retrieved 1 July 2024.
98. ^ "Eclipse Community Survey 2014 results | Ian Skerrett". Ianskerrett.wordpress.com. 23 June 2014. Archived from the original on 25 June 2014. Retrieved 23 June 2014.
99. ^ "Results of Eclipse Community Survey 2012". eclipse.org. Archived from the original on 11 April 2016.
100. ^ "Compare Repositories – Open Hub". Archived from the original on 7 September 2014.
101. ^ "Stack Overflow Annual Developer Survey". Stack Exchange, Inc. Retrieved 9 January 2020. Stack Overflow's annual Developer Survey is the largest and most comprehensive survey of people who code around the world. Each year, we field a survey covering everything from developers' favorite technologies to their job preferences. This year marks the ninth year we've published our annual Developer Survey results, and nearly 90,000 developers took the 20-minute survey earlier this year.
102. ^ "Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2015". Stack Overflow. Archived from the original on 4 May 2019. Retrieved 29 May 2019.
103. ^ "Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2017". Stack Overflow. Archived from the original on 29 May 2019. Retrieved 29 May 2019.
104. ^ "Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2018". Stack Overflow. Archived from the original on 30 May 2019. Retrieved 29 May 2019.
105. ^ "Git (software) Jobs, Average Salary for Git Distributed Version Control System Skills". Itjobswatch.co.uk. Archived from the original on 8 October 2016. Retrieved 30 September 2016.
106. ^ "Team Foundation Server Jobs, Average Salary for Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) Skills". Itjobswatch.co.uk. Archived from the original on 29 October 2016. Retrieved 30 September 2016.
107. ^ "Subversion Jobs, Average Salary for Apache Subversion (SVN) Skills". Itjobswatch.co.uk. Archived from the original on 25 October 2016. Retrieved 30 September 2016.
108. ^ "Mercurial Jobs, Average Salary for Mercurial Skills". Itjobswatch.co.uk. Archived from the original on 23 September 2016. Retrieved 30 September 2016.
109. ^ "VSS/SourceSafe Jobs, Average Salary for Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (VSS) Skills". Itjobswatch.co.uk. Archived from the original on 29 October 2016. Retrieved 30 September 2016.
110. ^ "Windows switch to Git almost complete: 8,500 commits and 1,760 builds each day". Ars Technica. 24 May 2017. Archived from the original on 24 May 2017. Retrieved 24 May 2017.
111. ^ "git-init". Git. Archived from the original on 15 March 2022.
112. ^ "Git – Branches in a Nutshell". Git. Archived from the original on 20 December 2020. Retrieved 15 June 2020. The "master" branch in Git is not a special branch. It is exactly like any other branch. The only reason nearly every repository has one is that the git init command creates it by default and most people don't bother to change it.
113. ^ Chacon & Straub 2014, pp. 103–109.
114. ^ github/renaming, GitHub, 4 December 2020, retrieved 4 December 2020
115. ^ Default branch name for new repositories now main, GitLab, 22 June 2021, retrieved 22 June 2021
116. ^ "Git Revert | Atlassian Git Tutorial". Atlassian. Reverting has two important advantages over resetting. First, it doesn't change the project history, which makes it a "safe" operation for commits that have already been published to a shared repository.
117. ^ "Gitflow Workflow | Atlassian Git Tutorial". Atlassian. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
118. ^ Chacon & Straub 2014, pp. 170–174.
119. ^ "Forking Workflow | Atlassian Git Tutorial". Atlassian. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
120. ^ "Git repository access control". Archived from the original on 14 September 2016. Retrieved 6 September 2016.
121. ^ Pettersen, Tim (20 December 2014). "Securing your Git server against CVE-2014-9390". Archived from the original on 24 December 2014. Retrieved 22 December 2014.
122. ^ Hamano, J. C. (18 December 2014). "[Announce] Git v2.2.1 (and updates to older maintenance tracks)". Newsgroup: gmane.linux.kernel. Archived from the original on 19 December 2014. Retrieved 22 December 2014.
123. ^ "CVE-2015-7545". 15 December 2015. Archived from the original on 26 December 2015. Retrieved 26 December 2015.
124. ^ "Git 2.6.1". GitHub. 29 September 2015. Archived from the original on 11 April 2016. Retrieved 26 December 2015.
125. ^ a b c Blake Burkhart; et al. (5 October 2015). "Re: CVE Request: git". Archived from the original on 27 December 2015. Retrieved 26 December 2015.
126. ^ "hash – How safe are signed git tags? Only as safe as SHA-1 or somehow safer?". Information Security Stack Exchange. 22 September 2014. Archived from the original on 24 June 2016.
127. ^ "Why does Git use a cryptographic hash function?". Stack Overflow. 1 March 2015. Archived from the original on 1 July 2016.
128. ^ "Git – hash-function-transition Documentation". Git.

External links

[edit]

• Official website

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Git Wikimedia Commons has media related to Git.

v t e Version control software
Years, where available, indicate the date of first stable release. Systems with names in italics are no longer maintained or have planned end-of-life dates.
Local only	Free/open-source RCS (1982) SCCS (1973) Proprietary The Librarian (1969) Panvalet (1970s) PVCS (1985) QVCS (1991)
Client–server	Free/open-source CVS (1986, 1990 in C) CVSNT (1998) QVCS Enterprise (1998) Subversion (2000) Proprietary AccuRev SCM (2002) Azure DevOps Server (via TFVC) (2005) Services (via TFVC) (2014) ClearCase (1992) CMVC (1994) Dimensions CM (1980s) DSEE (1984) Integrity (2001) Perforce Helix (1995) SCLM (1980s?) Software Change Manager (1970s) StarTeam (1995) Surround SCM (2002) Synergy (1990) Team Concert (2008) Vault (2003) Visual SourceSafe (1994)
Distributed	Free/open-source BitKeeper (2000) Breezy (2017) Code Co-op (1997) Darcs (2002) DCVS (2002) Fossil (2007) Git (2005) GNU arch (2001) GNU Bazaar (2005) Mercurial (2005) Monotone (2003) Proprietary Azure DevOps Server (via Git) (2013) Services (via Git) (2014) TeamWare (1992) Plastic SCM (2006)
Concepts	Baseline Branch Trunk Changeset Commit Gated Delta compression Interleaved File comparison Fork Merge Monorepo Repository Tag
Category Comparison List

Authority control databases
International	VIAF
National	Germany United States France BnF data Czech Republic Norway Israel
Other	IdRef