How to Install and Configure Git on CentOS 7

Git is an open source, distributed version control system (VCS). It’s commonly used for source code management (SCM), with sites like GitHub offering a social coding experience, and popular projects such as Perl, Ruby on Rails, and the Linux kernel using it.

• These instructions are intended for installing Git on CentOS 7.
• I’ll be working from a Liquid Web Self Managed CentOS 7 server, and I’ll be logged in as root.

If you’re using CentOS 5, then refer to this tutorial on installing git from source on CentOS 5. If you’re using CentOS 6, then refer to this tutorial on installing git on CentOS 6.

First, you’ll follow a simple best practice: ensuring the existing packages are up to date before installing anything new.

yum -y update

Then it’s a matter of just running one command for installation via yum:

yum -y install git

Once this command is complete, git will be installed and ready to use!

As of the writing of this tutorial, the current version of Git available in the Liquid Web yum repositories is: git version 1.8.3.1. You can check the version of git that was installed by using the following command:

git --version

To prevent any commit errors, it’s a good idea to setup your user for git. We’ll change to the user testuser (which we’re assuming is a user on your server) with the e-mail address testuser@example.com.

su testuser
git config --global user.name "testuser"
git config --global user.email "testuser@example.com"

Next we’ll verify the configuration changes by viewing the .gitconfig .

git config --list