f2er / js-git

A JavaScript implementation of Git.

JS-Git

JS-Git is an open source project implementing git client and server in pure JavaScript.

Why Re-implement Git in JavaScript?

JavaScript has farther reach than any other programming language out there. It can run on tablets, phones, laptops, Chromebooks, and pretty much anything that has a browser. Also thanks to node.js, it can run in many headless server environments as well.

Git is an amazing tool for sharing code and data in a distributed manner. Adding this to everyone's tool-chain will enable many great tools and products.

Target Platforms

My goal is to target every platform that has enough primitives to make sense. This includes:

• ChromeOS Apps
• Firefox OS Apps
• Windows RT WinJS Apps
• HTML5 Web Apps (on all modern browsers, including IE 10)
• PhoneGap Apps
• Desktop Chrome Apps
• Anything else that has network access, persistent storage, and binary data support in JavaScript.

Feature Goals

I don't intent to make a 100% clone of all the features of the official git program. That would be insane and require a lot more money than I'm asking for. My main goal is to enable the 90% case of interesting stuff:

• Clone remote repositories to local storage over http, git, or ssh.
• Make and commit local changes offline.
• Manage tags and branches offline.
• Push changes back up to remote repositories.
• Serve git repositories over http, git, or ssh.
• Be very modular so bits can be used by any software that needs them.

Potential Products

Some example products that would be enabled by this are:

• ChromeOS IDE for developing on Chromebooks.
• Node.JS blog engine with git as the database.
• Custom Git hosting using custom storage back-ends.
• GIT CLI for restricted environments.
• Standalone GIT GUI desktop app.
• Git based deployment tools.
• JavaScript package management for server and client.
• Whatever else you come up with.

For the Children

My main driving force is to build a programming environment to teach kids to program. It needs to run on the devices that the kids already have. There are a lot of youth who have access to tablets or Chromebooks, but have no way to program properly on them. I want to change this and give them the tools to eventually become professional programmers.

JS-Git in a Chrome App

One sample application that I'm using to test my code is known as js-git-app.

This app is still in the early stages, It's available in the Chrome app store to test on any device that has Chrome installed.

JS-Git as a Node.JS CLI Tool

Another sample usage is js-git-node.

This is a CLI tool that can replace a subset of the git command-line tool. This is useful on platforms that have node.js, but it's still hard to install git. (windows, crosh shell, etc...)

Related Packages

Not all parts of js-git are in this package. Of note, the min-stream code is already factored out into several standalone packages.

• min-stream - Helpers for working with min-streams.
• min-stream-node - A node.js adapter that provides tcp client and server as well as file streams using min-streams.
• min-stream-uv - A crazy experiment to implement the same interface as min-stream-node, but using node's private internal libuv bindings for maximum speed and unstability.
• min-stream-chrome - Another implementation of the tcp and fs API, but wrapping chrome packaged apps's special APIs.
• min-stream-http-codec - A set of filters that makes implementing HTTP clients and servers easy.

Projects using JS-Git

• js-git-app - A chrome packaged app used to demo/test using js-git in a chrome environment.
• js-git-node - A node CLI tool used to demo/test using js-git in the node.js environment.