How to install GIT on Linux (Ubuntu & CentOS)

Git is one of the famous, open-source & distributed version controlling system, that is used for tracking changes in files/code among multiple peoples/locations. Being a distributed system allows every repository on every system to be a full fledged repository in itself with complete history & version tracking capabilities.

It was created by Linus Torvalds for Linux kernel development but ever since then it has been adopted by many big & small organizations alike for version controlling. Git is free software & distributed under the terms of GNU General Public License.

In this tutorial, we will learn to install git Ubuntu 16.04 & CentOS 7.

( Also read : How to install JENKINS on CenOS 7 )

Installation on CentOS 7

We can install git using 2 methods i.e. either using yum or installing from source. We will start by using yum for git installation,

YUM method

Just like any other software, we can install git using the 'yum install' command,

$ yum install git

Git package is available with default Centos repositories. Once the git has been installed, we can check the installed version by executing,

$ git --version

Using Source package method

At the time of writing this tutorial, git 2.13.3 is the latest package available. So to download the latest git package, run

$ wget https://github.com/git/git/archive/v2.13.3.zip

Now unzip the downloaded git.zip using the following command,

$ unzip v2.13.3.zip
$ cd git-2.13.3

Now before we move onto compiling & installing git, we need to make sure that we have all the required packages ,

$ yum install gcc perl-ExtUtils-MakeMaker
$ yum install curl-devel expat-devel gettext-devel openssl-devel zlib-devel

Once the packages have been installed, proceed further to compiling the git source code,

$ make configure
$ ./configure –prefix=/usr/local
$ make –prefix=/usr/local install

Once the setup has been completed, we can check the git version using the same command as above i.e.

$ git –version

Installation on Ubuntu 16.04

Similarly like CentOS , we can use 2 different methods to install git on Ubuntu. First method is using 'apt-get' & second is installing from source,

Apt-Get method

To install git using 'apt-get', run the following commands,

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install git

Check the installed git version using command ,

$ git –version

Source package method

As done with CentOS installation, we will install the required packages for compiling source code first,

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev libexpat1-dev gettext unzip

next, download the git source file,

$ wget https://github.com/git/git/archive/v2.13.3.zip

Now unzip the downloaded git.zip using the following command,

$ unzip v2.13.3.zip
$ cd git-2.13.3

Next, compile & install the source code

$ make prefix=/usr/local all
$ sudo make prefix=/usr/local install

Once the setup is done, git will be installed.

In our future tutorials, we will discuss git in a little more depth. If having any questions/queries regarding this tutorial, please leave them in the comment box below.