Clementson's Blog

Getting Git on Mac OS X

Monday, August 27, 2007

I frequently build new software and tinker around with it just because I enjoy learning new things. However, new SCM software is something that I don't normally learn "for fun". For years, CVS was good enough for most open source projects that I got involved with. Then, a couple of years ago, I tried out darcs. The combination of CVS and darcs seemed to provide a good set of alternatives for most open source projects (depending on the size and the social nature of the project). However, in many new projects, CVS seems to have been superceeded by Subversion and darcs seems to have been superceeded by Git. So, now, in the space of a few months, I've had to use both Subversion and Git for different projects. Git was the biggest headache as I use Mac OS X and I had trouble finding a version of Git that would build properly on OS X. So, to save others the hassles I went through, here is a summary of what I tried:

1. Build from source: This failed because of missing dependencies. I couldn't find a list of dependencies in the docs (but I didn't spend much time looking), and I didn't feel like mucking around too much, so I decided to take "the easy way out" and moved on to option #2.
2. Fink install: I already had fink on my Mac, so this seemed like an easy route. The docs said that Git 1.5.2.4-2 was available in unstable but when I queried unstable, all that was listed was 1.2.5-1. I figured that I just needed base functionality and decided to go ahead and download whatever fink had. Unfortunately, the install failed. So, after a reasonable period of swearing, I moved on to option #3.
3. Prepackaged binary: I prefer to build open source packages myself; however, some guy had prepackaged it for Mac OS X so I decided to give it a try. He said that he had "only tried this on Intel Macs, so your mileage may vary" and he was right - my mileage did vary. On my PPC PowerBook, the install failed. So, after an extended period of swearing, I moved on to option #4.
4. MacPorts install: I had never tried MacPorts before; but, after googling around a bit, it seemed like some people had been able to install Git using MacPorts. So, I crossed my fingers, downloaded MacPorts, and kicked off the Git install. It seemed like it built just about the entire universe; but, eventually, it did produce a functional Git (at the latest stable Git release of v1.5.2.5)