Microsoft Git

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.

If you encounter problems with Microsoft Git, please report them as GitHub issues.

Why is Microsoft Git 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. It does so in part by working with the GVFS protocol to prefetch packs of commits and trees and delay downloading of associated blobs. This is required for monorepos using VFS for Git. Additionally, some Git hosting providers support the GVFS protocol instead of the Git-native partial clone feature.

Downloading and Installing

If you're working in a monorepo and want to take advantage of Microsoft Git's performance boosts, 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 (i.e. manually installing the .appxbundle, installing the preview version of App Installer, or participating in the Windows Insider flight ring).

To install with Winget, run

winget install microsoft/git

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

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

For Ubuntu/Debian distributions, apt-get support is coming soon. For now, though, please use the most recent .deb package.

wget -o microsoft-git.deb https://github.com/microsoft/git/releases/download/v2.31.1.vfs.0.1/git-vfs_2.31.1.vfs.0.1.deb
sudo dpkg -i microsoft-git.deb

For other distributions, 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.

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 [email protected] with any additional questions or comments.