VGIT-NOTES-17-OCT-2018.PDF

This document introduces VGIT2, a partial implementation of the Git version control system specifically designed for OpenVMS IA64 (8.4 or higher).

Key Points:

• Availability: VGIT2 is distributed as a single ZIP file (VGIT2.ZIP) via the VSI secure FTP site and should be extracted on an OpenVMS system.
• Components: The kit includes vgit2.exe, the preferred UNIX-style executable which offers built-in usage notes, and cert.pem, a certificate file essential for secure interactions with services like GitHub or BitBucket.

• Setup: Initial configuration involves:

  1. Extracting the files.
  2. Defining vgit2 as a foreign command (e.g., $ vgit2 :== $device:[path]vgit2.exe).
  3. Defining the logical name git$ssl_certs to point to cert.pem.
  4. Running vgit2 config user -n username -e youremail to set up user details and create a git.config file.

• Usage: The UNIX-style vgit2.exe provides built-in help for various commands (e.g., add, clone, commit, pull, push, status). It can be used for team collaboration within an OpenVMS cluster and generally mirrors standard Git usage for services like GitHub, albeit with some minor syntactical differences.

• Limitations & Important Notes:

  • All files added to the repository must be in stream-lf format.
  • Requires an ODS-5 file system.
  • Initial repository loads or clones, especially for large projects, can be slow. The status command can also be slow for large projects.
  • Key-based authentication requires defining logical names for git$id_rsa and git$id_rsa_pub to map to the respective key files.

• Support: Users are encouraged to try the tool and contact the developers with any encountered issues or requests for additional functionality.