js-git

What is js-git?

The js-git npm package is a JavaScript implementation of Git. It allows you to interact with Git repositories directly from JavaScript, enabling functionalities such as reading and writing commits, branches, and tags, as well as handling Git objects and references.

What are js-git's main functionalities?

Read a Git Commit

This feature allows you to read a Git commit by its hash. The code sample demonstrates how to load a commit object and log its contents.

const jsGit = require('js-git');
const repo = jsGit();
repo.loadAs('commit', 'commit-hash', (err, commit) => {
  if (err) throw err;
  console.log(commit);
});

Write a Git Commit

This feature allows you to write a new Git commit. The code sample demonstrates how to create a commit object and save it to the repository.

const jsGit = require('js-git');
const repo = jsGit();
const commit = {
  tree: 'tree-hash',
  author: { name: 'Author Name', email: '[e-mail]', date: new Date() },
  message: 'Commit message'
};
repo.saveAs('commit', commit, (err, hash) => {
  if (err) throw err;
  console.log('Commit saved with hash:', hash);
});

List References

This feature allows you to list references in a Git repository. The code sample demonstrates how to list all branch references.

const jsGit = require('js-git');
const repo = jsGit();
repo.listRefs('refs/heads', (err, refs) => {
  if (err) throw err;
  console.log(refs);
});

Read a Git Tree

This feature allows you to read a Git tree object by its hash. The code sample demonstrates how to load a tree object and log its contents.

const jsGit = require('js-git');
const repo = jsGit();
repo.loadAs('tree', 'tree-hash', (err, tree) => {
  if (err) throw err;
  console.log(tree);
});

Other packages similar to js-git

isomorphic-git

Isomorphic-git is a pure JavaScript implementation of Git that works in both Node.js and browser environments. It provides a comprehensive set of Git functionalities, including cloning repositories, committing changes, and pushing to remote repositories. Compared to js-git, isomorphic-git offers more features and better support for modern JavaScript environments.

nodegit

NodeGit is a native Node.js binding to the libgit2 library, providing a high-performance interface to Git functionalities. It supports a wide range of Git operations, including repository management, commit history, and branch manipulation. NodeGit is more feature-rich and performant compared to js-git, but it requires native compilation.

README

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 intend 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 many youths 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...)