How to use the latest Git version

Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.

Git is easy to learn and has a tiny footprint with lightning fast performance. It outclasses SCM tools like Subversion, CVS, Perforce, and ClearCase with features like cheap local branching, convenientstaging areas, and multiple workflows.

If you can, it’s generally useful to install Git from source, because you’ll get the most recent version and be able to use the latest features.

Here is a small how to install the latest GIT version on Debian

wget https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.8.3.tar.gz
apt-get install libcurl4-gnutls-dev libexpat1-dev gettext libz-dev libssl-dev tar -zxf git-1.8.3.tar.gz cd git-1.8.3 make prefix=/usr/bin all sudo make prefix=/usr/bin install

Check that everything went fine by issuing

# git --version git version 1.8.3