Introduction

These are the MinGW / MSYS packages for the Git for Windows SDK.

Git configuration

LZMA (de-)compression

For convenience, the *.xml.lzma files are supposed to be (de-)compressed on-the-fly when checked out / in. To make this work you have to add the following diff and smudge / clean filters to your Git config file:

[diff "lzma"]
	textconv = lzma -d -c -qq | cat
[filter "lzma"]
	clean = lzma -z
	smudge = lzma -d
	required

If you let the SDK installer clone the packages repository this is already done for you. Otherwise you may want to use the config.template file.

Updating the issue date

Install the pre-commit hook from pre-commit.template to get the issue date for package files automatically updated if you commit changes to such files.

Getting involved

Creating mingw-get packages

If you want to create a new package for use with mingw-get the following steps are necessary:

• Create an mgwport / msysport "build recipe" file that downloads the source code, applies optional patches, builds the binaries, and packages them to archives. Just like MSYS started out as a fork of Cygwin, mgwport is a fork of the Cygwin Port project's cygport tool and thus uses (almost) the same syntax. However, as there seems to be very little documentation about either syntax available and mgwport / cygport are heavily inspired by Gentoo's Portage, the best resource I could possibly find is the Gentoo Development Guide's section about Ebuild Writing, in particular the Variables article. (See the mgwport file for mingw32-openssl as an example.)
• If you need help with the actual build flags to use for a particular package good places to look at are (in no particular order):
  • The *.cygport files inside the Cygwin Port project's Git repository, especially those inside directories with an mingw- prefix.
  • The release.sh scripts below the msysgit repository's src directory.
  • The pkgbuild.sh scripts inside the *-src.tar.lzma archives below LRN's mingw directory on his web server.
  • The build scripts inside the *-src.tar.lzma archives in the MinGW project's files section.
• Actually build the packages using the mgwport tool. Use the Git Development Environment shortcut for building *.mgwport files and the Git Development Environment (MSYS Mode) shortcut for building *.msysport files.
• Create an xml catalogue / package description file which lists meta-information and dependencies. This is the hardest part as there seems to be no documentation of the format available at all (and cygport does not have this type of file). So probably the best thing you can do is to derive the syntax from the existing catalogue files. (See the catalogue file for mingw32-openssl as an example.)
• Add the package catalogue's file name to the master package catalogue file.
• Upload the package archives to the web server location that is listed as download-host uri in its catalogue file. (Contact one of the project owners to get your package hosted as part of our Bintray organization.)
• Create a pull request for the new catalogue file and updated master catalogue file.

Getting in contact

We now have a mailing list for developers.