gitingo

I wanted to learn how Git works under the hood, so I built gitingo - a simple Git implementation written in Go.

It isn't a wrapper around the git command line tool. It creates standard Git objects (blobs, trees, commits), compresses them with zlib, hashes them with SHA-1, and updates .git/refs/heads/main directly.

Since it uses Git's exact file structure and object formats, you can run gitingo inside a standard Git repository, or check gitingo commits using official Git.

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Under the hood

Just Go and its standard library:

• Go: For fast execution and single binary builds
• Cobra (spf13/cobra): For CLI flags and subcommands
• crypto/sha1: Computes standard 40-character Git object IDs
• compress/zlib: Reads and writes compressed Git object files in .git/objects/

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Installing it globally

Options to install gitingo globally across Linux, macOS, or Windows:

1. Using Go (go install)

If you have Go installed:

go install github.com/devxdh/gitingo@latest

(Make sure $GOPATH/bin or ~/go/bin is in your PATH.)

2. One-liner shell script (Linux / macOS / WSL)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/devxdh/gitingo/main/install.sh | bash

3. Direct binary download

Grab precompiled binaries for Linux, macOS, or Windows directly from GitHub Releases.

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Usage

Here is how a basic workflow looks:

# 1. Initialize a repository (creates .git directory & main branch ref)
gitingo init my-project
cd my-project

# 2. Add a file to gitingo's object store (creates a blob object)
echo "Hello world" > main.txt
gitingo hash-object -w main.txt

# 3. Take a snapshot of the directory (creates a tree object)
gitingo write-tree

# 4. Create a commit
gitingo commit -m "Initial commit"

# 5. View commit history
gitingo log

Low-level plumbing commands

Commands for inspecting Git objects:

• gitingo cat-file -p <hash>: Print object contents (blob, tree, or commit)
• gitingo cat-file -t <hash>: Print object type (blob, tree, or commit)
• gitingo ls-tree <hash>: List items in a tree object
• gitingo commit-tree <tree-hash> -m "msg" -p <parent-hash>: Create a commit object manually

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Using Gitingo and official Git together (Hybrid mode)

Because gitingo writes standard Git objects, you can use it alongside official git on the exact same project:

# Initialize a repo with gitingo
gitingo init hybrid-demo
cd hybrid-demo
echo "made with gitingo" > file.txt
gitingo commit -m "Commit 1 from gitingo"

# Now run real Git in the exact same folder - Git reads Gitingo's commits cleanly
git log
git status

# Add another commit using real Git
echo "added with real git" >> file.txt
git commit -am "Commit 2 from real git"

# Check log again with gitingo
gitingo log --oneline

Both tools read from and write to .git/objects and .git/refs/heads/main.

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Building from source

git clone https://github.com/devxdh/gitingo.git
cd gitingo

make build    # builds binary to ./bin/gitingo
make install  # installs binary globally to system PATH
make test     # runs unit tests

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License

MIT.