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How To Install Git on CentOS 7

Updated on January 25, 2022

Git

CentOS

By Josh Barnett

Language

English

Not using CentOS 7?

Choose a different version or distribution.

Version

CentOS 7

Introduction

Version control has become an indispensable tool in modern software development. Version control systems allow you to keep track of your software at the source level. You can track changes, revert to previous stages, and branch off from the base code to create alternative versions of files and directories.

One of the most popular version control systems is git. Many projects maintain their files in a Git repository, and sites like GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket have made sharing and contributing to code with Git easier than ever.

In this guide, we will demonstrate how to install Git on a CentOS 7 server. We will cover how to install the software in a couple of different ways, each with their own benefits, along with how to set up Git so that you can begin collaborating right away.

Prerequisites

Before you begin with this guide, there are a few steps that need to be completed first.

You will need a CentOS 7 server installed and configured with a non-root user that has sudo privileges. If you haven’t done this yet, you can run through steps 1–4 in the CentOS 7 initial server setup guide to create this account.

Once you have your non-root user, you can use it to SSH into your CentOS server and continue with the installation of Git.

Step 1 — Installing Git

The easiest way to install Git is from CentOS’s default software repositories. This is the fastest method, but the Git version that is installed this way may be older than the newest version available. If you need the latest release, consider compiling git from source.

Use yum, CentOS’s native package manager, to search for and install the latest git package available in CentOS’s repositories:

sudo yum install git

If the command completes without error, you will have git downloaded and installed. To double-check that it is working correctly, try running Git’s built-in version check:

git --version

If that check produced a Git version number, then you can now move on to setting up Git.

Step 2 — Setting Up Git

Now that you have git installed, you will need to configure some information about yourself so that commit messages will be generated with the correct information attached. To do this, use the git config command to provide the name and email address that you would like to have embedded into your commits:

git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email "you@example.com"

To confirm that these configurations were added successfully, we can see all of the configuration items that have been set by typing:

git config --list

Output
user.name=Your Name
user.email=you@example.com

This configuration will save you the trouble of seeing an error message and having to revise commits after you submit them.

Conclusion

You should now have git installed and ready to use on your system. To learn more about how to use Git, check out these more in-depth articles:

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About the author

Josh Barnett

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Jerry Sumpton

January 26, 2015

Instructions like these are hugely helpful. Thanks.

I don’t know what is best, but I used

./configure --prefix=/usr

to overwrite the older yum installed version.

wesleyhargrove

March 2, 2015

This article is missing a key ingredient: cURL.

This enables the HTTPS remote helper when cloning repositories.

This is how you can enable the HTTPS remote helper:

Install the libcurl-devel package in addition to the packages mentioned

sudo yum install curl-devel

Add --with-curl flag to configure

./configure --prefix=/usr --with-curl

Run make as normal

Now you can git clone https://.... Enjoy!

evalenzuela84

April 19, 2015

A very useful tutorial, thanks!

niaomingjian

January 17, 2017

After installing git from source following this tutorial, I can’t run git command elsewhere other than /usr/local/bin. I need to create a symbol file for it. ln -s /usr/local/bin/git /usr/bin/git

jeremycornett

October 20, 2017

Ironically enough, using the group install “Development Tools” actually installs the git package from yum, which is what I’m trying to avoid. To that end, I instead installed all the build prerequisites specifically, as described on https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-Installing-Git The only difference is that perl wasn’t specifically mentioned there.

    - gcc
    - automake
    - autoconf
    - perl-CPAN
    - perl-devel
    - libcurl-devel
    - expat-devel
    - gettext
    - zlib-devel
    - openssl-devel

Here’s an ansible playbook to do the above process…

name: configure test01 hosts: test01 vars: git_version: “2.14.2” # https://github.com/git/git/releases git_user_name: “{{ ansible_hostname }}” git_user_email: “{{ ansible_hostname }}@company.com” tasks:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-git-on-centos-7
- name: check git version shell: “git --version 2>&1 | grep {{ git_version }}” failed_when: false changed_when: false register: git_versions_match
https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-Installing-Git
- name: install build prerequisites become: yes yum: name: “{{ item }}” state: latest with_items:
  - gcc
  - automake
  - autoconf
  - perl-CPAN
  - perl-devel
  - libcurl-devel
  - expat-devel
  - gettext
  - zlib-devel
  - openssl-devel when: git_versions_match.rc != 0
- name: download git {{ git_version }} get_url: url: https://github.com/git/git/archive/v{{ git_version }}.tar.gz dest: /tmp/git.tar.gz when: git_versions_match.rc != 0
- name: extract git.tar.gz unarchive: src: /tmp/git.tar.gz dest: /tmp remote_src: yes when: git_versions_match.rc != 0
- name: make configure make: chdir: /tmp/git-{{ git_version }} target: configure when: git_versions_match.rc != 0
- name: configure command: ./configure --prefix=/usr/local args: chdir: /tmp/git-{{ git_version }} when: git_versions_match.rc != 0
- name: make install remote_user: root make: chdir: /tmp/git-{{ git_version }} target: install when: git_versions_match.rc != 0
- name: git config user name git_config: name: user.name value: “{{ git_user_name }}” scope: global
- name: git config user email git_config: name: user.email value: “{{ git_user_email }}” scope: global
- name: git config rebase on pull git_config: name: pull.rebase value: true scope: global
- name: git config branch.autosetuprebase always git_config: name: branch.autosetuprebase value: always scope: global

Dubz

April 12, 2018

WHat about uninstalling it? There’s no instructions on that…

rritsoftwaresolutions

November 12, 2021

how to install in docker in centos-9server,
my email== rritsoftwaresolutions@gmail.com

india , + 91 9505782251, watsup

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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