Grit — Git in Rust

Grit is a Git engine in idiomatic Rust: a linkable grit-lib and a modern grit client (grit-cli) built on it. See ROADMAP.md for the plan.

The Grit project is brought to you by the mad geniuses at GitButler ⧓.

Motivation

Grit started as a reimplementation of the whole git command line, aimed at passing Git's own test suite. That carried workarounds, slow paths, and every legacy subcommand, so the Git-compatible CLI (grit-git) and the ported test harness have been removed. The focus now: grit-lib as a clean, linkable library and grit-cli as a modern Git client with human, --json, and --markdown output. Both stay compatible with Git where it matters: repositories on disk and the wire protocol. Performance is the top priority, measured against real git on large-repo scenarios.

Approach

Core Git semantics live in grit-lib (pluggable ODB and ref backends over time). The install script ships grit from grit-cli. Behavior is validated with Rust tests (cross-checked against the system git binary) and benchmarks. Unused areas (archive, email workflow, foreign-VCS bridges) are dropped from active development. Docs and benchmarks stay in sync with each change. Background: True Grit.

The headline CLI shipped by the install script is grit, a simpler, opinionated interface from the grit-cli crate. It is the only binary the install script installs, on every platform including Windows.

Usability

The current goal is speed and a clean library API while keeping on-disk and wire compatibility with Git where the library and CLI implement a feature. Try it out and send a fix or report an issue for gaps you hit.

Installation

To install the grit CLI via Bash, you can run our install script:

$ curl -fsSL https://grit-scm.com/install | sh

There are builds for Mac and Linux (aarch64 and x86_64 for both). Linux ships both glibc and statically-linked musl binaries. Windows installs the same grit CLI.

Updating

To update your version of Grit, you can run grit update and it will re-run the install script.

The grit CLI

The grit binary (from the grit-cli crate) is what the install script ships. It is not a Git-identical CLI; it is a simpler interface for common developer workflows built on grit-lib, portable to Windows.

grit treats status as the home screen and keeps the common path terse:

grit auth   # authenticate into github and store https auth tokens for fetch/push as your user
grit clone https://github.com/user/project
grit        # status dashboard
grit commit "message" # commit changes
grit switch -c topic
grit push
grit pull

It covers local work (status, add, commit, branch, switch, merge, log, config) plus remote basics (remote add, clone, fetch, pull, push) with plain-language output.

grit can also serve repositories: grit upload-pack and grit receive-pack are the server side of fetch and push, used over ssh and by grit-http-server for smart HTTP.

The Windows version also comes with grit manager which works as an interface to Windows Credential Manager to store grit auth tokens securely.

Rust Crates

Crate	Description
grit-cli	The grit binary — workflow-oriented CLI backed by grit-lib (shipped by the install script)
grit-lib	Core library: object model, diff engine, index, refs, revision walking, merge, config, and more
grit-protocol / grit-http-server	Smart HTTP serving via in-process grit-lib upload-pack / receive-pack
grit-examples	Runnable examples of library usage
grit-test-support	Workspace-only helpers for integration tests

License

All code and crates in this repository, including grit-lib and grit-cli, are MIT licensed.

Testing

cargo test -p grit-lib --lib
cargo test --workspace

See TESTING.md for the full strategy.