Version Control with Git

Chapter 2. Installing Git

At the time of this writing, Git is (seemingly) not installed by default on any GNU/Linux distribution or any other operating system. So, before you can use Git, you must install it. The steps to install Git depend greatly on the vendor and version of your operating system. This chapter describes how to install Git on Linux and Microsoft Windows and within Cygwin.

Using Linux Binary Distributions

Many Linux vendors provide pre-compiled, binary packages to make installation of new applications, tools, and utilities easy. Each package specifies its dependencies, and the distribution’s package manager typically installs the prerequisites and the desired package in one (well-orchestrated and automated) fell swoop.

Debian/Ubuntu

On most Debian and Ubuntu systems, Git is offered as a collection of packages, where each package can be installed independently depending on your needs. The primary Git package is called git-core, documentation is available in git-doc, and there are other packages to consider, too:

git-archgit-cvsgit-svn

If you need to transfer a project from Arch, CVS, or Subversion to Git or vice versa, install one or more of these packages.

git-guigitkgitweb

If you prefer to browse repositories in a graphical application or your Web browser, install these as appropriate. git-gui is a Tcl/Tk-based graphical user interface for Git; gitk is another Git browser written in Tcl/Tk but focuses more on visualizing project history. gitweb is written in Perl and ...