How to install latest version of git on CentOS 8.x/7.x/6.x

Question

You can use WANDisco's CentOS repository to install Git 2.x: for CentOS 6, for CentOS 7

1. Install WANDisco repo package:

   yum install http://opensource.wandisco.com/centos/6/git/x86_64/wandisco-git-release-6-1.noarch.rpm
   - or -
   yum install http://opensource.wandisco.com/centos/7/git/x86_64/wandisco-git-release-7-1.noarch.rpm
   - or -
   yum install http://opensource.wandisco.com/centos/7/git/x86_64/wandisco-git-release-7-2.noarch.rpm
   

2. Install the latest version of Git 2.x:

   yum install git
   

3. Verify the version of Git that was installed:

   git --version
   

As of 02 Mar. 2020, the latest available version from WANDisco is 2.22.0.

Having a look at the blog here I found the solution in one of the comments. Make sure you got the rpmforge repository added to your CentOS yum and just run the flowing command:

yum --disablerepo=base,updates --enablerepo=rpmforge-extras install git

If you already have git installed then use:

yum --disablerepo=base,updates --enablerepo=rpmforge-extras update git

Related question(s):

1. Facing issues while upgrading git to latest version on CentOS 6.4

Note update:

Thanks to Anthony Hatzopoulos, for git v1.8x you'll need to use git18 as in:

yum --disablerepo=base,updates --enablerepo=rpmforge-extras install git18 

Note update 2:

Also thanks to @Axlrod for the below hint and @Hiphip for the feedback:

Change the rpmforge.repo file to have rpmforge-extras to enabled, yum update git. Otherwise it complained about dependency problems.

Note update 3:

Installing a specific version of git say 2.x I found this nice and easy-to-follow guide on how to download the GIT source and compile it yourself (and install it). If the accepted answer does not give you the version you want, try the following instructions:

http://tecadmin.net/install-git-2-0-on-centos-rhel-fedora/

(And pasted/reformatted from above source in case it is removed later)

Step 1: Install Required Packages

Firstly we need to make sure that we have installed required packages on your system. Use following command to install required packages before compiling Git source.

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

Step 2: Uninstall old Git RPM

Now remove any prior installation of Git through RPM file or Yum package manager. If your older version is also compiled through source, then skip this step.

# yum remove git

Step 3: Download and Compile Git Source

Download git source code from kernel git or simply use following command to download Git 2.0.4.

# cd /usr/src
# wget https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-2.0.4.tar.gz
# tar xzf git-2.0.4.tar.gz

After downloading and extracting Git source code, Use following command to compile source code.

# cd git-2.0.4
# make prefix=/usr/local/git all
# make prefix=/usr/local/git install
#
# echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/git/bin' >> /etc/bashrc
#  or
# echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/git/bin' > /etc/profile.d/git.sh
#
# source /etc/bashrc

HINT 1: Updated method of adding compiled git bin directory to bashrc. Because echo "export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/git/bin" >> /etc/bashrc used "" instead of '', it would expand the current session's value for $PATH instead of keeping it as a variable, and could adversely affect the entire system. At the minimum, it should use '' instead of "" and should really be a separate script in /etc/profile.d/

HINT 2 (@DJB): /usr/local/git/bin before $PATH, since the older version of git was already on $PATH: export PATH=/usr/local/git/bin:$PATH

Step 4. Check Git Version

One completion of above steps, you have successfully install Git in your system. Let use following command to check git version

# git --version

git version 2.0.4

I also wanted to add that the "Getting Started" guide at the GIT website also includes instructions on how to download and compile it yourself:

http://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-Installing-Git

Rackspace maintains the ius repository, which contains a reasonably up-to-date git, but the stock git has to first be removed.

CentOS 6 or 7 instructions (run as root or with sudo):

# retrieve and check CENTOS_MAIN_VERSION (6 or 7):
CENTOS_MAIN_VERSION=$(cat /etc/centos-release | awk -F 'release[ ]*' '{print $2}' | awk -F '.' '{print $1}')
echo $CENTOS_MAIN_VERSION
# output should be "6" or "7"

# Install IUS Repo and Epel-Release:
yum install -y https://repo.ius.io/ius-release-el${CENTOS_MAIN_VERSION}.rpm
yum install -y epel-release 

# re-install git:
yum erase -y git*
yum install -y git-core

# check version:
git --version
# output: git version 2.24.3

Note: git-all instead of git-core often installs an old version. Try e.g. git224-all instead.

The script is tested on a CentOS 7 docker image (7e6257c9f8d8) and on a CentOS 6 docker image (d0957ffdf8a2).

I found this nice and easy-to-follow guide on how to download the GIT source and compile it yourself (and install it). If the accepted answer does not give you the version you want, try the following instructions:

http://tecadmin.net/install-git-2-0-on-centos-rhel-fedora/

(And pasted/reformatted from above source in case it is removed later)

Step 1: Install Required Packages

Firstly we need to make sure that we have installed required packages on your system. Use following command to install required packages before compiling Git source.

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

Step 2: Uninstall old Git RPM

Now remove any prior installation of Git through RPM file or Yum package manager. If your older version is also compiled through source, then skip this step.

# yum remove git

Step 3: Download and Compile Git Source

Download git source code from kernel git or simply use following command to download Git 2.5.3.

# cd /usr/src
# wget https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-2.5.3.tar.gz
# tar xzf git-2.5.3.tar.gz

After downloading and extracting Git source code, Use following command to compile source code.

# cd git-2.5.3
# make prefix=/usr/local/git all
# make prefix=/usr/local/git install
# echo 'pathmunge /usr/local/git/bin/' > /etc/profile.d/git.sh 
# chmod +x /etc/profile.d/git.sh
# source /etc/bashrc

Step 4. Check Git Version

On completion of above steps, you have successfully install Git in your system. Use the following command to check the git version

# git --version

git version 2.5.3

I also wanted to add that the "Getting Started" guide at the GIT website also includes instructions on how to download and compile it yourself:

http://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-Installing-Git

My personal preference is to build rpm packages for CentOS when installing non-standard software and replacing distributed components. For this I recommend that you use Mock to create a clean build environment.

The procedure is:

1. Obtain the source RPMS or a suitable SPEC file and pristine source tarball. In this case one may find source RPM packages for git2X for CentOS-6 at: http://dl.iuscommunity.org/pub/ius/archive/CentOS/6/SRPMS/. Packages for other CentOS releases are also available.

2. Install the necessary support software:

   yum install epel-release  # you need this for mock
   yum install rpm-build
   yum install redhat-rpm-config
   yum install rpmdevtools
   yum install mock
   

3. Add a rpm build user account (do not build as root or as a real user - security issues will come back to bite you).

   sudo adduser builder --home-dir /home/builder \
   --create-home --user-group --groups mock \
   --shell /bin/bash --comment "rpm package builder"
   

4. Next we need a build environment.

   su -l builder
   rpmdev-setuptree
   

   This produces the following directory structure:

   ~
   └── rpmbuild
       ├── BUILD
       ├── RPMS
       ├── SOURCES
       ├── SPECS
       └── SRPMS
   

5. We are using a prepared SRPMS so the SOURCES tarballs can be ignored for this case and we can go direct to SRPMS.

   wget http://dl.iuscommunity.org/pub/ius/archive/CentOS/6/SRPMS/git2u-2.5.3-1.ius.centos6.src.rpm \
   -O ~/rpmbuild/SRPMS/git2u-2.5.3-1.ius.centos6.src.rpm
   

6. Configure mock (as root)

   cd /etc/mock
   rm default.cfg
   ln -s epel-6-x86_64.cfg default.cfg
   vim default.cfg
   

   Disable the beta repos. Enable the base and update repos.

7. Initialize the build tree (/var/lib/mock is default)

   mock --init
   

8. If we were building from SOURCES then this is where we would employ the SPEC file and use mock --buildsrpm . . .. But in this case we go directly to the binary build step:

   mock --no-clean --rebuild ~/rpmbuild/SRPMS/git2u-2.5.3-1.ius.centos6.src.rpm
   

   This will resolve the build dependencies and download them (about 95 or so packages) into the clean build root. It will then extract the sources and build the binary from the provided SRPM and leave it in /var/lib/mock/epel-6-x86_64/result; or in whatever custom build root location and architecture you provided. It will take a long time. There is a lot to this package; particularly documentation.

9. If all goes well then you should end up with a suit of RPM packages suitable for installation in place of the distro version. This is what I ended up with:

   ll /var/lib/mock/epel-6-x86_64/result
   total 34996
   -rw-rw-r--. 1 byrnejb mock   448455 Oct 30 10:09 build.log
   -rw-rw-r--. 1 byrnejb mock    52464 Oct 30 10:09 emacs-git2u-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.noarch.rpm
   -rw-rw-r--. 1 byrnejb mock    47228 Oct 30 10:09 emacs-git2u-el-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.noarch.rpm
   -rw-rw-r--. 1 byrnejb mock  8474478 Oct 30 09:57 git2u-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.src.rpm
   -rw-rw-r--. 1 byrnejb mock  8877584 Oct 30 10:09 git2u-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.x86_64.rpm
   -rw-rw-r--. 1 byrnejb mock    27284 Oct 30 10:09 git2u-all-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.noarch.rpm
   -rw-rw-r--. 1 byrnejb mock    27800 Oct 30 10:09 git2u-bzr-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.noarch.rpm
   -rw-rw-r--. 1 byrnejb mock   112564 Oct 30 10:09 git2u-cvs-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.noarch.rpm
   -rw-rw-r--. 1 byrnejb mock   436176 Oct 30 10:09 git2u-daemon-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.x86_64.rpm
   -rw-rw-r--. 1 byrnejb mock 15858600 Oct 30 10:09 git2u-debuginfo-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.x86_64.rpm
   -rw-rw-r--. 1 byrnejb mock    60556 Oct 30 10:09 git2u-email-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.noarch.rpm
   -rw-rw-r--. 1 byrnejb mock   274888 Oct 30 10:09 git2u-gui-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.noarch.rpm
   -rw-rw-r--. 1 byrnejb mock    79176 Oct 30 10:09 git2u-p4-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.noarch.rpm
   -rw-rw-r--. 1 byrnejb mock   483132 Oct 30 10:09 git2u-svn-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.x86_64.rpm
   -rw-rw-r--. 1 byrnejb mock   173732 Oct 30 10:09 gitk2u-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.noarch.rpm
   -rw-rw-r--. 1 byrnejb mock   115692 Oct 30 10:09 gitweb2u-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.noarch.rpm
   -rw-rw-r--. 1 byrnejb mock    57196 Oct 30 10:09 perl-Git2u-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.noarch.rpm
   -rw-rw-r--. 1 byrnejb mock    89900 Oct 30 10:09 perl-Git2u-SVN-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.noarch.rpm
   -rw-rw-r--. 1 byrnejb mock   101026 Oct 30 10:09 root.log
   -rw-rw-r--. 1 byrnejb mock      980 Oct 30 10:09 state.log
   

10. Install using yum or rpm.

    You will require git2u-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.x86_64.rpm at a minimum and such additional support packages as it requires (perl-Git2u-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.noarch.rpm) or you desire.

    This build has a cyclic dependency: git2u-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.x86_64.rpm depends upon perl-Git2u-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.noarch.rpm and perl-Git2u-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.noarch.rpm depends upon git2u-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.x86_64.rpm. A straight install with rpm will thus fail.

    There are two ways of dealing with it:

    • Install both at the same time via yum:

      yum localinstall \
        git2u-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.x86_64.rpm \
        perl-Git2u-2.5.3-1.ius.el6.noarch.rpm`
      

    • Setup a local yum repo.

      I am including my LocalFile.repo file below as it contains instructions on how to do this and provides the necessary repo file at the same time.

cat /etc/yum.repos.d/LocalFile.repo
# LocalFile.repo
#
#  This repo is used with a local filesystem repo.
#
# To use this repo place the rpm package in /root/RPMS/yum.repo/Packages.
# Then run: createrepo --database --update /root/RPMS/yum.repo.
#
# To use:
#  yum --enablerepo=localfile [command]
#  
# or to use only ONLY this repo, do this:
#
#  yum --disablerepo=\* --enablerepo=localfile [command]

[localfile]
baseurl=file:///root/RPMS/yum.repo
name=CentOS-$releasever - Local Filesystem repo

# Before persistently enabling this repo see the priority note below.
enabled=0
gpgcheck=0

# When this repo is enabled all packages in repos with priority>5
# will not be updated even when they have a more recent version.
# Be careful with this.
priority=5

You also may be required to manually pre-install additional dependency packages such as perl-TermReadKey available from the usual repositories.