Build your own GIT

This project is a minimal implementation of Git in C++, replicating core Git functionalities such as object storage, indexing, and tree management. The goal is to understand Git's internals by building a working model of its key commands.

Features

The current implementation supports the following Git commands:

• git init – Initializes a new Git repository.
• git cat-file -p <object> – Displays the content of a Git object.
• git hash-object <file> – Computes the SHA-1 hash of a file.
• git hash-object -w <file> – Computes the SHA-1 hash and writes the object to the .git/objects directory.
• git ls-tree <tree> – Lists the contents of a tree object.
• git ls-tree -r <tree> – Recursively lists the contents of a tree object.
• git ls-tree -l <tree> – Lists tree contents with object size.
• git ls-files – Shows the tracked files in the index.
• git write-tree – Converts the index into a tree object.
• git add . – Adds files to the index.

Installation

To build and run the project, ensure you have a C++ compiler installed (GCC/Clang/MSVC) and CMake for build management.

cmake --debug-output -B build -S .
cmake --build build

Usage

Initialize a repository:

./git-cpp init

Add files to the index:

./git-cpp add .

Write the index to a tree:

./git-cpp write-tree

List files in the index:

./git-cpp ls-files

Inspect a tree:

./git-cpp ls-tree <Tree-hash>

Compute and store a file’s hash:

./git-cpp hash-object -w myfile.txt

Retrieve an object’s content:

./git-cpp cat-file -p <object-hash>

Project Structure

.git-cpp/
├── src/           # Source code
├── include/       # Header files
├── build/         # Compiled binaries
├── .git/          # Git metadata when initialized
└── README.md      # Project documentation

Roadmap

• Implement git commit
• Implement git checkout
• Optimize object storage
• Add unit tests

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to submit issues or pull requests to improve the project.