How To Install Git on Ubuntu 14.04

Introduction

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.

Pre-Flight Check

• These instructions are intended for installing Git on Ubuntu 14.04.
• I’ll be working from a Liquid Web Core Managed Ubuntu 14.04 server, and I’ll be logged in as root.

Step #1: Installation

First, you’ll follow a simple best practice: ensuring the list of available packages is up to date before installing anything new.

apt-get update

Then it’s a matter of just running one command for installation via apt-get:

apt-get install git-core

You’ll be asked to confirm the download and installation; simply enter y to confirm. 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 repositories is: git version 1.9.1. You can check the version of git that was installed by using the following command:

git --version

Step #2: Configuration

To prevent any commit errors, it’s a good idea to setup your user for git. We’ll setup the user testuser with the e-mail address testuser@example.com.

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. Since you may have been roaming around your server’s file system before starting this tutorial, use the cd command to return to your home directory:

cd

And then view the .gitconfig:

cat .gitconfig

You can also view the same details of your configuration by using the following command:

git config --list