Installing Git

1.5 Getting Started - Installing Git

Installing Git

Before you start using Git, you have to make it available on your computer. Even if it’s already installed, it’s probably a good idea to update to the latest version. You can either install it as a package or via another installer, or download the source code and compile it yourself.

Note

This book was written using Git version 2.8.0. Though most of the commands we use should work even in ancient versions of Git, some of them might not or might act slightly differently if you’re using an older version. Since Git is quite excellent at preserving backwards compatibility, any version after 2.8 should work just fine.

Installing on Linux

If you want to install the basic Git tools on Linux via a binary installer, you can generally do so through the package management tool that comes with your distribution. If you’re on Fedora (or any closely-related RPM-based distribution, such as RHEL or CentOS), you can use dnf:

$ sudo dnf install git-all

If you’re on a Debian-based distribution, such as Ubuntu, try apt:

$ sudo apt install git-all

For more options, there are instructions for installing on several different Unix distributions on the Git website, at https://git-scm.com/download/linux.

Installing on macOS

There are several ways to install Git on a Mac. The easiest is probably to install the Xcode Command Line Tools. On Mavericks (10.9) or above you can do this simply by trying to run git from the Terminal the very first time.

$ git --version

If you don’t have it installed already, it will prompt you to install it.

If you want a more up to date version, you can also install it via a binary installer. A macOS Git installer is maintained and available for download at the Git website, at https://git-scm.com/download/mac.