Re: Regarding GIT API

From: Dmitry Potapov <dpotapov@gmail.com>
Date: Feb 15, 2011, 11:49 UTC
Message-ID: <AANLkTim4ucYtoyNEM2+=-dJTmpBtqy1zJOEX3k3Wk+XU@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <loom.20110215T120434-373@post.gmane.org>

On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 11:08:14AM +0000, Abhinav Goyal wrote:

> I just need the git command
> support for my C++ application. I have my own reason for not using command
> prompt system call.

If you need full git functionality, currently the only proper way is to use git porcelain command, i.e. run commands using system() and parse their output. Git porcelain commands are designed to be used in this way, so their output is easy to parse. Also, their output should not change between different versions, in contrast to front-end git commands, which provide more human oriented output.

NOTE: There are libraries for some other languages such as Java and Ruby
(jGit and Grit correspondingly), but they contain re-implementation of
most git functionality. No one has bothered to write anything like that
in C. So, libgit2 provides only low-level and very limited functionality.

More information about git interfaces to different languages, you can find here:

https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Interfaces,_frontends,_and_tools#Interfaces_to_other_programming_languages

Dmitry