Preliminary Git port for Minix 3

[ Updated 2006-06-27: Now includes HTTP support using the Minix Curl port ]

I've done a first cut at a port of the Git version control system. This is the system currently used for managing the Linux kernel. It's a distributed version control system, similar in manner to the way 'darcs' and 'arch' work.

I've not got everything working yet. The 'git' protocol requires a program to be running on the server hosting the repository, which I haven't ported yet. Still, the port is useful as it is. You can publish repositories using HTTP for example and you can retrieve remote repositories using 'git' or 'http'.

You can get the buildable distribution from minix-git-1.4.0a.tar.gz. It's about 850KB in size. To build you'll need your path setup as:

/usr/gnu/i386-pc-minix/bin:/usr/gnu/bin:/usr/gnu/bin:$PATH

You'll need bash, as well as a variety of the GNU tools. I installed everything off 'packman'.

To build just do:

make
make install
chmem =25000000 ~/bin/*

This will do a 'local install' into a $HOME/bin directory. Add this to your path and it should work. A quick tutorial is available here

The Git repository for the changes I've made is here: http://www.minixtips.com/repos/minix-git.git/

You can retrieve it with git:

git clone http://www.minixtips.com/repos/minix-git.git/ minix-git

Once you have the repository it will default to the 'master' branch. To build from the repository you'll want the 'minix_1_4_0' branch - this is the one that contains my Minix changes. You can change to it with:

git clone http://www.minixtips.com/repos/minix-git.git/ minix-git
cd minix-git
git checkout minix_1_4_0

The 'git' protocol works for retrieving remote repositories too. For example, to retrieve the original Git repository:

git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git

Be aware that this is an 'in-progress' port so will very likely have bugs. I wouldn't use it on your only copy of your important source just yet!

Categories: minix, development