microsoft/git and the Scalar CLI

This is microsoft/git, a special Git distribution to support monorepo scenarios. If you are not working in a monorepo, you are likely searching for Git for Windows instead of this codebase.

In addition to the Git command-line interface (CLI), microsoft/git includes the Scalar CLI to further enable working with extremely large repositories. Scalar is a tool to apply the latest recommendations and use the most advanced Git features. You can read the Scalar CLI documentation or read our Scalar user guide including the philosophy of Scalar.

If you encounter problems with microsoft/git, please report them as GitHub issues.

Why is this fork needed?

Git is awesome - it's a fast, scalable, distributed version control system with an unusually rich command set that provides both high-level operations and full access to internals. What more could you ask for?

Well, because Git is a distributed version control system, each Git repository has a copy of all files in the entire history. As large repositories, aka monorepos grow, Git can struggle to manage all that data. As Git commands like status and fetch get slower, developers stop waiting and start switching context. And context switches harm developer productivity.

microsoft/git is focused on addressing these performance woes and making the monorepo developer experience first-class. The Scalar CLI packages all of these recommendations into a simple set of commands.

One major feature that Scalar recommends is partial clone, which reduces the amount of data transferred in order to work with a Git repository. While several services such as GitHub support partial clone, Azure Repos instead has an older version of this functionality called the GVFS protocol. The integration with the GVFS protocol present in microsoft/git is not appropriate to include in the core Git client because partial clone is the official version of that functionality.

Downloading and Installing

If you're working in a monorepo and want to take advantage of the performance boosts in microsoft/git, then you can download the latest version installer for your OS from the Releases page. Alternatively, you can opt to install via the command line, using the below instructions for supported OSes:

Windows

Note: Winget is still in public preview, meaning you currently need to take special installation steps: Either manually install the .appxbundle available at the preview version of App Installer, or participate in the Windows Insider flight ring since winget is available by default on preview versions of Windows.

To install with Winget, run

winget install --id microsoft.git

Double-check that you have the right version by running these commands, which should have the same output:

git version
scalar version

To upgrade microsoft/git, use the following Git command, which will download and install the latest release.

git update-microsoft-git

You may also be alerted with a notification to upgrade, which presents a single-click process for running git update-microsoft-git.

macOS

To install microsoft/git on macOS, first be sure that Homebrew is installed then install the microsoft-git cask with these steps:

brew tap microsoft/git
brew install --cask microsoft-git

Double-check that you have the right version by running these commands, which should have the same output:

git version
scalar version

To upgrade microsoft/git, you can run the necessary brew commands:

brew update
brew upgrade --cask microsoft-git

Or you can run the git update-microsoft-git command, which will run those brew commands for you.

Linux

Ubuntu/Debian distributions

On newer distributions*, you can install using the most recent Debian package. To download and validate the signature of this package, run the following:

# Install needed packages
sudo apt-get install -y curl debsig-verify

# Download public key signature file
curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/microsoft/git/releases/latest \
| grep -E 'browser_download_url.*msft-git-public.asc' \
| cut -d : -f 2,3 \
| tr -d \" \
| xargs -I 'url' curl -L -o msft-git-public.asc 'url'

# De-armor public key signature file
gpg --output msft-git-public.gpg --dearmor msft-git-public.asc

# Note that the fingerprint of this key is "B8F12E25441124E1", which you can
# determine by running:
gpg --show-keys msft-git-public.asc | head -n 2 | tail -n 1 | tail -c 17

# Copy de-armored public key to debsig keyring folder
sudo mkdir /usr/share/debsig/keyrings/B8F12E25441124E1
sudo mv msft-git-public.gpg /usr/share/debsig/keyrings/B8F12E25441124E1/

# Create an appropriate policy file
sudo mkdir /etc/debsig/policies/B8F12E25441124E1
cat > generic.pol << EOL
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE Policy SYSTEM "https://www.debian.org/debsig/1.0/policy.dtd">
<Policy xmlns="https://www.debian.org/debsig/1.0/">
  <Origin Name="Microsoft Git" id="B8F12E25441124E1" Description="Microsoft Git public key"/>
  <Selection>
    <Required Type="origin" File="msft-git-public.gpg" id="B8F12E25441124E1"/>
  </Selection>
  <Verification MinOptional="0">
    <Required Type="origin" File="msft-git-public.gpg" id="B8F12E25441124E1"/>
  </Verification>
</Policy>
EOL

sudo mv generic.pol /etc/debsig/policies/B8F12E25441124E1/generic.pol

# Download Debian package
curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/microsoft/git/releases/latest \
| grep "browser_download_url.*deb" \
| cut -d : -f 2,3 \
| tr -d \" \
| xargs -I 'url' curl -L -o msft-git.deb 'url'

# Verify
debsig-verify msft-git.deb

# Install
sudo dpkg -i msft-git.deb

Double-check that you have the right version by running these commands, which should have the same output:

git version
scalar version

To upgrade, you will need to repeat these steps to reinstall.

*Older distributions are missing some required dependencies. Even though the package may appear to install successfully, microsoft/ git will not function as expected. If you are running Ubuntu 20.04 or older, please follow the install from source instructions below instead of installing the debian package.

Installing From Source

On older or other distros you will need to compile and install microsoft/git from source:

git clone https://github.com/microsoft/git microsoft-git
cd microsoft-git
make -j12 prefix=/usr/local
sudo make -j12 prefix=/usr/local install

For more assistance building Git from source, see the INSTALL file in the core Git project.

Common Debian based dependencies

While the INSTALL file covers dependencies in detail, here is a shortlist of common required dependencies on older Debian/Ubuntu distros:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libz-dev libssl-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev libexpat1-dev gettext cmake gcc

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.microsoft.com.

When you submit a pull request, a CLA-bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., label, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repos using our CLA.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.