Installing git from source on OS X - exec-path error

Question

I'm trying to install git from source using

make prefix=/Users/gareth/local/git install

but after installation nothing works properly, the commands all fail with, for example

git: 'pull' is not a git-command. See 'git --help'.

After some research I found out that the most obvious problem is this output:

$ git --exec-path
/Users/gareth

but I don't know why the exec-path is set to my home directory. The binaries are all in what appears to be the correct place, ~/local/git/libexec/git-core/git*

How can I work out what went wrong, and how to fix it?

Answer 1

Maybe this is not really what you're looking for, but I would recommend you MacPorts.

With it, you can quickly build projects from sources and keeping them up-to-date. It will also handle any dependencies.

Answer 2

I think you're building Git the wrong way. You should be donig something like:

./configure --prefix=/Users/gareth/local/git
make
make install

Then make sure the git binary is on your path (and possibly git-receive-pack if you want to push via ssh from another machine).

Answer 3

I don't know the answer to your question, but as a workaround, consider installing Git for OS X. [There is a Build-Your-Own page on the wiki, but I'm not sure if it'll provide enough detail for what you want to do.]