Gitk - The Git Repository Browser

Gitk is a graphical Git repository browser. It displays the commit history of a Git repository as a graph, showing the relationships between commits, branches, and tags.

Usage

To view the history of the current repository:

gitk

To view the history of specific files or directories:

gitk path/to/file
gitk path/to/directory

To view a specific branch or range of commits:

gitk branch-name
gitk v1.0..v2.0

For more usage examples and options, see the gitk manual.

Building

Gitk is a Tcl/Tk application. It requires Tcl/Tk to be installed on your system.

Running directly

Gitk can be run from the source directory without installation:

./gitk

This allows for quick testing of changes.

Installation

To install system-wide, you can use either make or meson:

# Install to default location ($HOME/bin)
make install

# Install to system-wide location
sudo make install prefix=/usr/local

# Install to custom location
make install prefix=/opt/gitk

# Using Meson
meson setup builddir
meson compile -C builddir
meson install -C builddir

Both build systems will handle setting the correct Tcl/Tk interpreter path and installing translation files.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! The preferred method for submitting patches is via email to the Git mailing list, as this allows for more thorough review and broader community feedback. However, GitHub pull requests are also accepted.

All commits must be signed off (use git commit --signoff) and should have commit messages prefixed with gitk:.

Send patches to git@vger.kernel.org and CC j6t@kdbg.org. See the Git project's patch submission guidelines for detailed instructions on creating and sending patches.

Please do not submit work that originated from AI, because this project is down-streamed to the Git project, which has a rather strict AI guideline.

License

Gitk is distributed under the GNU General Public License, either version 2, or (at your option) any later version.