- NAME
- SYNOPSIS
- DESCRIPTION
- CONSTRUCTORS
- METHODS
- PLUGIN SUPPORT
- OTHER PERL GIT WRAPPERS
- AUTHOR
- BUGS
- SUPPORT
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- LICENSE
NAME
Git::Repository - Perl interface to Git repositories
SYNOPSIS
use Git::Repository; # start from an existing repository $r = Git::Repository->new( git_dir => $gitdir ); # start from an existing working copy $r = Git::Repository->new( work_tree => $dir ); # or init our own repository first Git::Repository->run( init => $dir, ... ); $r = Git::Repository->new( work_tree => $dir ); # or clone from a URL first Git::Repository->run( clone => $url, $dir, ... ); $r = Git::Repository->new( work_tree => $dir ); # run commands # - get the full output (no errput) $output = $r->run(@cmd); # - get the full output as a list of lines (no errput) @output = $r->run(@cmd); # - obtain a Git::Repository::Command object $cmd = $r->command(@cmd); # obtain version information my $version = $r->version(); # compare current git version if ( $r->version_gt('1.6.5') ) { ...; }
DESCRIPTION
Git:. It is possible to call the
command() and
run() methods against the class itself, and the context (typically current working directory) will be obtained from the options and environment.
As a low-level interface, it provides no sugar for particular Git commands. Specifically, it will not prepare environment variables that individual Git commands may need or use.
However, the
GIT_DIR and
GIT_WORK_TREE environment variables are special: if the command is run in the context of a
Git::Repository object, they will be overridden by the object's
git_dir and
work_tree attributes, respectively. It is however still possible to override them if necessary, using the
env option.
Git::Repository requires at least Git 1.5.0, and is expected to support any later version.
See
Git::Repository::Tutorial for more code examples.
CONSTRUCTORS
There are two ways to create
Git::Repository objects:
new( %args, $options )
Create a new
Git::Repository object, based on an existing Git repository.
Parameters are:
- git_dir => $gitdir
The location of the git repository (.git directory or equivalent).
For backward compatibility with versions 1.06 and before,
repositoryis accepted in place of
git_dir(but the newer name takes precedence).
- work_tree => $dir
The location of the git working copy (for a non-bare repository).
If
work_treeactually points to a subdirectory of the work tree,
Git::Repositorywill automatically recompute the proper value.
For backward compatibility with versions 1.06 and before,
working_copyis accepted in place of
work_tree(but the newer name takes precedence).
At least one of the two parameters is required. Usually, one is enough, as
Git::Repository can work out where the other directory (if any) is.
new() also accepts a reference to an option hash which will be used as the default by
Git::Repository::Command when working with the corresponding
Git::Repository instance.
So this:
my $options = { git => '/path/to/some/other/git', env => { GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL => 'book@cpan.org', GIT_COMMITTER_NAME => 'Philippe Bruhat (BooK)', }, }; my $r = Git::Repository->new( work_tree => $dir, $options );
is equivalent to explicitly passing the option hash to each
run() or
command().
It probably makes no sense to set the
input option in
new(), but Git::Repository won't stop you. Note that on some systems, some git commands may close standard input on startup, which will cause a
SIGPIPE. Git::Repository::Command will raise an exception.
create( @cmd )
The
create() method is deprecated, and will go away in the future.
Runs a repository initialization command (like
init or
clone) and returns a
Git::Repository object pointing to it.
@cmd may contain a hashref with options (see Git::Repository::Command.
Do not use the -q option on such commands.
create() needs to parse their output to find the path to the repository.
create() also accepts a reference to an option hash which will be used to set up the returned
Git::Repository instance.
Now that
create() is deprecated, instead of:
$r = Git::Repository->create( ... );
simply do it in two steps:
Git::Repository->run( ... ); $r = Git::Repository->new( ... );
METHODS
Git::Repository supports the following methods:
command( @cmd )
Runs the git sub-command and options, and returns a
Git::Repository::Command object pointing to the sub-process running the command.
As described in the Git::Repository::Command documentation,
@cmd may also contain a hashref containing options for the command.
run( @cmd )
Runs the command and returns the output as a string in scalar context, or as a list of lines in list context. Also accepts a hashref of options.
Lines are automatically
chomped.
If the git command printed anything on stderr, it will be printed as warnings. If the git sub-process exited with status
128 (fatal error), or
129 (usage message),
run() will
die().
git_dir()
Returns the repository path.
repo_path()
For backward compatibility with versions 1.06 and before,
repo_path() it provided as an alias to
git_dir().
work_tree()
Returns the working copy path. Used as current working directory by
Git::Repository::Command.
wc_path()
For backward compatibility with versions 1.06 and before,
wc_path() it provided as an alias to
work_tree().
options()
Return the option hash that was passed to
Git::Repository->new().
version()
Return the version of git, as given by
git --version.
Version-comparison "operators"
Git evolves very fast, and new features are constantly added. To facilitate the creation of programs that can properly handle the wide variety of Git versions seen in the wild, a number of version comparison "operators" are available.
They are named
version_op where op is the equivalent of the Perl operators
lt,
gt,
le,
ge,
eq,
ne. They return a boolean value, obtained by comparing the version of the git binary and the version string passed as parameter.
The methods are:
- version_lt( $version )
-
- version_gt( $version )
-
- version_le( $version )
-
- version_ge( $version )
-
- version_eq( $version )
-
- version_ne( $version )
-
All those methods also accept an option hash, just like the others.
Note that there are a small number of cases where the version comparison operators will not compare versions correctly for very old versions of Git. Typical example is
1.0.0a gt 1.0.0 which should return true, but doesn't. This only matters in comparisons, only for version numbers prior to
1.4.0-rc1 (June 2006), and only when the compared versions are very close.
Other issues exist when comparing development version numbers with one another. For example,
1.7.1.1 is greater than both
1.7.1.1.gc8c07 and
1.7.1.1.g5f35a, and
1.7.1 is less than both. Obviously,
1.7.1.1.gc8c07 will compare as greater than
1.7.1.1.g5f35a (asciibetically), but in fact these two version numbers cannot be compared, as they are two siblings children of the commit tagged
v1.7.1).
If one were to compute the set of all possible version numbers (as returned by
git --version) for all git versions that can be compiled from each commit in the git.git repository, the result would not be a totally ordered set. Big deal.
Also, don't be too precise when requiring the minimum version of Git that supported a given feature. The precise commit in git.git at which a given feature was added doesn't mean as much as the release branch in which that commit was merged.
PLUGIN SUPPORT
Git::Repository intentionally has only few methods. The idea is to provide a lightweight wrapper around git, to be used to create interesting tools based on Git.
However, people will want to add extra functionality to
Git::Repository, the obvious example being a
log() method that returns simple objects with useful attributes.
Taking the hypothetical
Git::Repository::Plugin::Hello module which source code is listed in the previous reference, the methods it provides would be loaded and used as follows:
use Git::Repository qw( Hello ); my $r = Git::Repository->new(); print $r->hello(); print $r->hello_gitdir();
It's possible to load only a selection of methods from the plugin:
use Git::Repository [ Hello => 'hello' ]; my $r = Git::Repository->new(); print $r->hello(); # dies: Can't locate object method "hello_gitdir" print $r->hello_gitdir();
If your plugin lives in another namespace than
Git::Repository::Plugin::, just prefix the fully qualified class name with a
+. For example:
use Git::Repository qw( +MyGit::Hello );
See Git::Repository::Plugin about how to create a new plugin.
OTHER PERL GIT WRAPPERS
A number of Perl git wrappers already exist. Why create a new one?
I have a lot of ideas of nice things to do with Git as a tool to manipulate blobs, trees, and tags, that may or may not represent revision history of a project. A lot of those commands can output huge amounts of data, which I need to be able to process in chunks. Some of these commands also expect to receive input.
What follows is a short list of "missing features" that I was looking for when I looked at the existing Git wrappers on CPAN. They are the "rational" reason for writing my own (the real reason being of course "I thought it would be fun, and I enjoyed doing it").
Even though it works well for me and others,
Git::Repository has its own shortcomings: it is a low-level interface to Git commands, anything complex requires you to deal with input/output handles, it provides no high-level interface to generate actual Git commands or process the output of commands (but have a look at the plugins), it doesn't fully work under Win32 yet, etc. One the following modules may therefore be better suited for your needs, depending on what you're trying to achieve.
Git.pm
Git.pm is not on CPAN. It is usually packaged with Git, and installed with the system Perl libraries. Not being on CPAN makes it harder to install in any Perl. It makes it harder for a CPAN library to depend on it.
It doesn't allow calling
git init or
git clone.
The
command_bidi_pipe function especially has problems:
Git::Class
Depends on Moose, which seems an unnecessary dependency for a simple wrapper around Git. The startup penalty could become significant for command-line tools.
Although it supports
git init and
git clone (and has methods to call any Git command), it is mostly aimed at porcelain commands, and provides no way to control bidirectional commands (such as
git commit-tree).
Git::Wrapper
Doesn't support streams or bidirectional commands.
AUTHOR
Philippe Bruhat (BooK),
<book at cpan.org>
BUGS
Since version 1.17,
Git::Repository delegates the actual command execution to
System::Command. Win32 support for that module is currently very bad (the test suite hangs in a few places). If you'd like better Win32 support for
Git::Repository, help me improve
System::Command!
Please report any bugs or feature requests to
bug-git-repository::Repository
You can also look for information at:
RT: CPAN's request tracker
AnnoCPAN: Annotated CPAN documentation
CPAN Ratings
Search CPAN
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Todd Rinalo, who wanted to add more methods to
Git::Repository, which made me look for a solution that would preserve the minimalism of
Git::Repository. The
::Plugin interface is what I came up with.
LICENSE
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.