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Git on Lenny, a love story

“You are running Debian stable, because you prefer the Debian stable tree. It runs great, there is just one problem: the software is a little bit outdated compared to other distributions.” http://backports.debian.org/

Exactly…

So I have Debian Lenny running nicely as a production server. Along comes git. A long period of flirtation follows and eventually I find myself calling her everyday. Time to make a real git of her and get her into the workflow. So I save up 3 months wages, get down on one knee and roll out a:

# DONT DO THIS! Skip to the end if you prefer facts to love and stories.
$ sudo aptitude update
$ sudo aptitude install git
... pregnant pause while internets are downloaded
... Done

So I’m all happy as to my eyes that’s a yes, but then things get weird. She pulls off her face and reveals that she is infact a transitional dummy package to pull in the renamed gnuit package. It can be safely removed.

What!? Please expand on that you freak…

$ aptiude show gnuit
Package: gnuit
...
Provides: git
Description: GNU Interactive Tools, a file browser/viewer and process viewer/killer

Erm… hold it right there. You are not the git I love. Git would never claim to be a file viewer killer like that. It would say something more sexually aggressive like fast, scalable, distributed revision control system or something. I hate you fakey git imposter. Be gone from this box:

$ sudo aptitude purge git

OK now think fast dammit, where did you see her last.

$ aptitude search git
git-core - fast, scalable, distributed revision control system

A-HA!, git-core!, well of course I love your new hair-do, I just didn’t recognise you, what with getting your name changed and all, come here:

$ sudo aptitude install git-core
... pregnant pause while internets are downloaded
... Done

thank god it’s you. Still I hope you don’t mind but I’d just like to take a quick look at your birth certificate over here…

$ git --version
git version 1.5.6.5

NO NO NO. If there is one thing worse than installing completely unrelated packges, it’s finding the package you want is older than your nan.

$ sudo aptiude purge git-core

Oh wrinkly torment I’ve just purged your grandmother. You were a youthful git 1.7 when we last met, what have I done to deserve this… Googling commences, hmm debian sources… yes yes, git-core, uh huh, (obsolete), oh what have i done, stackoverflow… git-core… not you again, …wait… what… backports you say? install lenny-backports-keyring you say? that all sounds a bit extreme, I just want git… hyperlinking now…

backports.debian.org is where it’s at! To complete the quote at the top:

“…the software is a little bit outdated compared to other distributions. This is where backports come in.

Backports are recompiled packages from testing (mostly) and unstable (in a few cases only, e.g. security updates) in a stable environment so that they will run without new libraries (whenever it is possible) on a Debian stable distribution.”

Go there and be sure to check the instructions page which is a couple of steps simpler than the stackoverflow suggestion, or just read on…

Installing git 1.7 rather than gnuit or git 1.5 on Debian Lenny

In /etc/apt/sources.list add

deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports lenny-backports main

Update your apt indexes

$sudo apt-get update

Check you can now see the latest git version. The lesson from all that rambling above is to always ask apt what it is you are about to install before doing it.

$ aptitude -t lenny-backports show git
Package: git
State: not installed
Version: 1:1.7.1-1.1~bpo50+1
Description: fast, scalable, distributed revision control system

Go install!

$ sudo aptitude -t lenny-backports install git
... Done
$ git --version
git version 1.7.1

Love, git init your brains out and have git babies. See below:

Now I can get on with that web focused git workflow. If you are wondering how to make git do all your work for you then I highly recommend Mr joemaller’s article on the subject.

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