Installing Git from source on RedHat Linux machine

When you do DevOps work, you deal with all kinds of tools and operating systems. Today, we'll talk about Linux and Git. With my Linux days behind me (or in front of me because you never know where technology will go), I was surprised that yum update git command did not update Git client on Linux box. After a bit of digging, I've found out what do you need to do to upgrade Git client on Linux.

Uninstall existing Git client:

sudo yum remove git

 

Install dependencies:

sudo yum install curl-devel expat-devel gettext-devel

sudo yum install gcc openssl-devel zlib-devel perl-ExtUtils-MakeMaker

 

Install Git:

cd /usr/src

wget https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-2.16.2.tar.gz (feel free to substitute this link with the link to the other version of Git client)

tar xzf git-2.16.2.tar.gz

cd git-2.16.2

sudo make prefix=/usr/local/git all

sudo make prefix=/usr/local/git install

sudo –i

echo "export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/git/bin" >> /etc/bashrc

exit

source /etc/bashrc

 

That's it. Check the version of Git client by running "git –version". You should get: git version 2.16.2

By the way, these steps should also on Linux CentOS and Fedora (and any other ReadHat Linux flavour out there)