Install git on Bluehost shared hosting

Sun, Jan 30, 2011

For developer like me, git and svn or any version control system is a must. And Bluehost does not support git out-of-the-box nor tell you how to install it. But if you have SSH access (if not, request — pretty easy), you can install git with some simple steps.

1. You have to specify where to install git. It should be inside your home directory because outside this directory, everything else is read-only. My case is ~/.local Create that directory and add the following line to .bashrc inside your home directory. Logout and login again after that.

export PATH=$HOME/.local/bin:$HOME/.local/usr/bin:$PATH

1. Make a temporary directory for git source and download git tar ball from kernel.org (latest version is 1.7.3.5, released on 2011-01-05)

cd .local
mkdir -v src 
cd src
wget http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.7.3.5.tar.gz
tar -xzf git-1.7.3.5.tar.gz

1. Config and install git

cd git-1.7.3.5
./configure --prefix=$HOME/.local LDFLAGS="-L/lib64"
make
make install

That’s it. Now type git and you will see it’s working. Pretty easy, right?

usage: git [--version] [--exec-path[=<path>]] [--html-path]
           [-p|--paginate|--no-pager] [--no-replace-objects]
           [--bare] [--git-dir=</path><path>] [--work-tree=</path><path>]
           [-c name=value] [--help]
           <command /> [<args>]</args></path>

There are lots of git guide and cheat sheet out the. My favorite cheat sheet is http://cheat.errtheblog.com/s/git

Happy coding!