3a59e5954e
As a "distributed" VCS, git should better define the encodings of its core textual data structures, in particular those that are part of the network protocol. That git is encoding agnostic is only really true for blob objects. E.g. the 'non-NUL bytes' requirement of tree and commit objects excludes UTF-16/32, and the special meaning of '/' in the index file as well as space and linefeed in commit objects eliminates EBCDIC and other non-ASCII encodings. Git expects bytes < 0x80 to be pure ASCII, thus CJK encodings that partly overlap with the ASCII range are problematic as well. E.g. fmt_ident() removes trailing 0x5C from user names on the assumption that it is ASCII '\'. However, there are over 200 GBK double byte codes that end in 0x5C. UTF-8 as default encoding on Linux and respective path translations in the Mac and Windows versions have established UTF-8 NFC as de-facto standard for path names. Update the documentation in i18n.txt to reflect the current status-quo. Signed-off-by: Karsten Blees <blees@dcon.de> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
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Git - the stupid content tracker
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"git" can mean anything, depending on your mood.
- random three-letter combination that is pronounceable, and not
actually used by any common UNIX command. The fact that it is a
mispronunciation of "get" may or may not be relevant.
- stupid. contemptible and despicable. simple. Take your pick from the
dictionary of slang.
- "global information tracker": you're in a good mood, and it actually
works for you. Angels sing, and a light suddenly fills the room.
- "goddamn idiotic truckload of sh*t": when it breaks
Git is a fast, scalable, distributed revision control system with an
unusually rich command set that provides both high-level operations
and full access to internals.
Git is an Open Source project covered by the GNU General Public
License version 2 (some parts of it are under different licenses,
compatible with the GPLv2). It was originally written by Linus
Torvalds with help of a group of hackers around the net.
Please read the file INSTALL for installation instructions.
See Documentation/gittutorial.txt to get started, then see
Documentation/giteveryday.txt for a useful minimum set of commands, and
Documentation/git-commandname.txt for documentation of each command.
If git has been correctly installed, then the tutorial can also be
read with "man gittutorial" or "git help tutorial", and the
documentation of each command with "man git-commandname" or "git help
commandname".
CVS users may also want to read Documentation/gitcvs-migration.txt
("man gitcvs-migration" or "git help cvs-migration" if git is
installed).
Many Git online resources are accessible from http://git-scm.com/
including full documentation and Git related tools.
The user discussion and development of Git take place on the Git
mailing list -- everyone is welcome to post bug reports, feature
requests, comments and patches to git@vger.kernel.org (read
Documentation/SubmittingPatches for instructions on patch submission).
To subscribe to the list, send an email with just "subscribe git" in
the body to majordomo@vger.kernel.org. The mailing list archives are
available at http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/,
http://marc.info/?l=git and other archival sites.
The maintainer frequently sends the "What's cooking" reports that
list the current status of various development topics to the mailing
list. The discussion following them give a good reference for
project status, development direction and remaining tasks.