How to Install Git on Ubuntu 14.04

Introduction

Git is one of the most popular versions control system. You can manage your software code by monitoring changes, reverting back to previous versions of your code or create new branches for alternative code that you will be able to merge with your main code later on. This guide will help you install Git on Ubuntu 14.04.

What you’ll need

Before you begin this guide you’ll need the following:

• Access to Ubuntu 14.04 terminal

Step 1 — Installing Git on Ubuntu

Option 1 – Installing Git With Apt

Ubuntu 14.04 already contains Git in default repositories. You can easily install it using the apt package manager. Firstly update it by running the following command:

sudo apt-get update

Note that version in the repositories might not be the newest one, you can check available versions with:

apt-cache policy git

An example output would be:

git:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 1:1.9.1-1ubuntu0.3
  Version table:
     1:1.9.1-1ubuntu0.3 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates/main amd64 Packages
        500 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-security/main amd64 Packages
     1:1.9.1-1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty/main amd64 Packages

There are 2 available versions – 1:1.9.1-1ubuntu0.3 0 and 1:1.9.1-1 0 . Candidate version shows which version would be installed. To install git run:

sudo apt-get install git

Running this command will install git on your system.

Option 2 – Installing Git from GitHub

If you need the most recent version of git then you can install it from GitHub. Before you install git you need additional packages for it:

sudo apt-get install libcurl4-gnutls-dev libexpat1-dev gettext libz-dev libssl-dev

Now visit this link and download the version you want to install.

In our example, we are going to use v2.11.0 version so it can be extracted using:

tar -zxf v2.11.0.tar.gz

However, you would need to use filename that you have downloaded instead of v2.11.0.tar.gz. Enter extracted directory:

cd git-2.11.0/

Now install git locally by running:

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

Step 2 — Configuring Git

Once you have successfully installed Git you will need to configure it. Set your username instead of user_name in the following command:

git config --global user.name "user_name"

Now enter your email address instead of email@domain.com.

git config --global user.email "email@domain.com"

Step 3 – List of Basic Git Commands

Here is a list of useful Git commands to help you get started with Git.

To see more git commands use:

git --help

Conclusion

Using this tutorial you have learned how to install Git on Ubuntu 14.04. You have also learned basic Git configuration and commands. You can now manage your code more effectively by creating branches, reverting changes and keeping track of your code.