microsoft/git

microsoft/git

Description: A fork of Git containing Microsoft-specific patches.

Language: C

License: NOASSERTION

Stars: 898

Forks: 108

Open issues: 25

Created: 2017-01-23T22:54:33Z

Pushed: 2026-07-15T06:41:56Z

Default branch: vfs-2.54.0

Fork: yes

Parent repository: git-for-windows/git

Archived: no

README: microsoft/git and the Scalar CLI ==================================

 

This is microsoft/git, a special Git distribution to support monorepo scenarios. If you are _not_ working in a monorepo, you are likely searching for Git for Windows instead of this codebase.

In addition to the Git command-line interface (CLI), microsoft/git includes the Scalar CLI to further enable working with extremely large repositories. Scalar is a tool to apply the latest recommendations and use the most advanced Git features. You can read [the Scalar CLI documentation](Documentation/scalar.adoc) or read our [Scalar user guide](contrib/scalar/docs/index.md) including [the philosophy of Scalar](contrib/scalar/docs/philosophy.md).

If you encounter problems with microsoft/git, please report them as GitHub issues.

Why is this fork needed? =========================================================

Git is awesome - it's a fast, scalable, distributed version control system with an unusually rich command set that provides both high-level operations and full access to internals. What more could you ask for?

Well, because Git is a distributed version control system, each Git repository has a copy of all files in the entire history. As large repositories, aka _monorepos_ grow, Git can struggle to manage all that data. As Git commands like status and fetch get slower, developers stop waiting and start switching context. And context switches harm developer productivity.

microsoft/git is focused on addressing these performance woes and making the monorepo developer experience first-class. The Scalar CLI packages all of these recommendations into a simple set of commands.

One major feature that Scalar recommends is partial clone, which reduces the amount of data transferred in order to work with a Git repository. While several services such as GitHub support partial clone, Azure Repos instead has an older version of this functionality called the GVFS protocol. The integration with the GVFS protocol present in microsoft/git is not appropriate to include in the core Git client because partial clone is the official version of that functionality.

Downloading and Installing =========================================================

If you're working in a monorepo and want to take advantage of the performance boosts in microsoft/git, then you can download the latest version installer for your OS from the Releases page. Alternatively, you can opt to install via the command line, using the below instructions for supported OSes:

Windows

__Note:__ Winget is still in public preview, meaning you currently need to take special installation steps: Either manually install the .appxbundle available at the preview version of App Installer, or participate in the Windows Insider flight ring since winget is available by default on preview versions of Windows.

To install with Winget, run

winget install --id microsoft.git

Double-check that you have the right version by running these commands, which should have the same output:

git version
scalar version

To upgrade microsoft/git, use the following Git command, which will download and install the latest release.

git update-microsoft-git

You may also be alerted with a notification to upgrade, which presents a single-click process for running git update-microsoft-git.

macOS

To install microsoft/git on macOS, first be sure that Homebrew is installed then install the microsoft-git cask with these steps:

brew tap microsoft/git
brew install --cask microsoft-git

Double-check that you have the right version by running these commands, which should have the same output:

git version
scalar version

To upgrade microsoft/git, you can run the necessary brew commands:

brew update
brew upgrade --cask microsoft-git

Or you can run the git update-microsoft-git command, which will run those brew commands for you.

Linux

Ubuntu/Debian distributions

On newer distributions*, you can install using the most recent Debian package. To download and validate the signature of this package, run the following:

# Install needed packages
sudo apt-get install -y curl debsig-verify

# Download public key signature file
curl -Os https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft-2025.asc

# De-armor public key signature file
gpg --output microsoft-2025.gpg --dearmor microsoft-2025.asc

# Note that the fingerprint of this key is "EE4D7792F748182B", which you can
# determine by running:
gpg --show-keys microsoft-2025.asc | head -n 2 | tail -n 1 | tail -c 17

# Copy de-armored public key to debsig keyring folder
sudo mkdir /usr/share/debsig/keyrings/EE4D7792F748182B
sudo mv microsoft-2025.gpg /usr/share/debsig/keyrings/EE4D7792F748182B/

# Create an appropriate policy file
sudo mkdir /etc/debsig/policies/EE4D7792F748182B
cat > generic.pol


EOL

sudo mv generic.pol /etc/debsig/policies/EE4D7792F748182B/generic.pol

# Download Debian package (substitute `amd64` with `arm64` on ARM machines)
curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/microsoft/git/releases/latest \
| grep "browser_download_url.*amd64.deb" \
| cut -d : -f 2,3 \
| tr -d \" \
| xargs -I 'url' curl -L -o msft-git.deb 'url'

# Verify
debsig-verify msft-git.deb

# Install
sudo dpkg -i msft-git.deb