Git is a popular version control system that is widely used in the open source community.
Git on z/OS has the following dependencies:
- bash - https://github.com/ZOSOpenTools/bashport/releases
- perl - https://github.com/ZOSOpenTools/perlport/releases
- less - (default pager) //github.com/ZOSOpenTools/lessport/releases
- ncurses - https://github.com/ZOSOpenTools/ncursesport/releases
Once you set up these dependences, you can then install Git.
Git on z/OS can be downloaded from https://github.com/ZOSOpenTools/gitport/releases.
If you have curl on your system, you can download the latest version with:
curl -L -o gitport.pax.Z https://pathtogit.pax.Z
You can then extract the pax.Z as follows:
pax -rf gitport.pax.Z
cd git-*
To obtain a CA certificate, you can download the recommended CA certificates extracted from Mozilla here: https://curl.se/docs/caextract.html
If you have zopen in your path, you can use the zopen update-cacerts command to download the latest CA certificate.
Once you have a CA Certificate on your file system, you can set the GIT_SSL_CAINFO environment variable to point to it.
export GIT_SSL_CAINFO=/path/to/my/cacert.pem
Once installed, you will need to source the .env file as follows:
. ./.env
This will set the PATH, LIBPATH, MANPATH and other Git environment variables.
Git on z/OS leverages Git's .gitattributes support to enable support for various encodings, documented here.
.gitattributes can be specified globally, or locally in repositories to determine the encoding of working tree files.
The working-tree-encoding attribute can be used to determine the working tree encoding. For example,
to convert all files from Git's internal UTF-8 encoding to IBM-1047, you can specify the following working-tree-encoding in your .gitattributes file:
* text working-tree-encoding=IBM-1047
This will result in Git on z/OS tagging all files as IBM-1047 on checkout.
If you want the working-tree-encoding to apply to the host platform only, then you can use:
platform-working-tree-encoding where platform is substituted with the system name.
On z/OS, platform is zos. Therefore, the .gitattributes would be:
* text zos-working-tree-encoding=IBM-1047
If no encoding is specified, the default UTF-8 encoding is used and all files are tagged as ISO8859-1.
To find out all of the supported encodings by git, run iconv -l.
When adding files, you need to make sure that the z/OS file tag matches the working-tree-encoding. Otherwise, you may encounter an error.
Important Note: If you are relying on the zos-working-tree-encoding support and you are editing your git-managed files on a non-z/OS platform, make sure that the files are encoded in UTF-8 mode. This is because Git assumes such files are encoded in UTF-8 prior to conversion. See the working-tree-encoding documentation for more details. If you insist on editing your files in a different encoding, make sure to add the working-tree-encoding to the .gitattributes to reflect the codepage:
* zos-working-tree-encoding=ibm-1047 working-tree-encoding=iso8859-1
This indicates that the file will be encoded in IBM-1047 on z/OS, but on non-z/OS platforms, it will be encoded in iso8859-1.
Note: Git on z/OS now aligns the file tag (CCSID) with the git working-tree-encoding by default. Previously, there was a specific handling for UTF-8 encoded files. These files were tagged as ISO8859-1 (CCSID 819) due to z/OS Open Tools' behavior under _BPXK_AUTOCVT=ON, which doesn't auto-convert files tagged with the UTF-8 tag (CCSID 1208). Consequently, the default tag for UTF-8 encoded files is now UTF-8 (or CCSID 1208).
To adjust the default tag for UTF-8, you can configure the git setting core.utf8ccsid to 819 using the following commands:
git config --global core.utf8ccsid 819# Global setting, 819 represents the CCSID for the UTF8 file taggit config core.utf8ccsid 819# Local setting affecting the current repository
Alternatively, you can set the GIT_UTF8_CCSID environment variable:
export GIT_UTF8_CCSID=819# Environment variable
The environment variable takes precedence over the git config setting.
Assuming you want to clone UTF-8 encoded files with the tag UTF8 or ccsid 819 as opposed to the default ccsid (1208):
git config --global core.utf8ccsid 819 # Set the UTF-8 ccsid 819 globally
git clone https://github.com/git/git
cd git
ls -lT # you will notice that all files are now tagged as UTF-8
To specify a binary encoding, you can use the binary attribute as follows:
*.png binary
This will tag all *.png files as binary.
Git on z/OS does not currently support adding untagged files. Files need to be tagged before
they can be added.
You can specify multiple working-tree-encoding attributes, where the later attributes overrides the initial attributes in case of an overlap.
* text working-tree-encoding=IBM-1047
*.png binary
If you are migrating from Rocket Software's Git, then the good news is that Git on z/OS should be compatible.
If you encounter any issues, please open an issue under https://github.com/ZOSOpenTools/gitport/issues.