"git --version" still showing the older version of git

Question

I downloaded git version 2.9.5 to replace my older version which is 2.7.4.

I downloaded the .gz file from: https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/

Turned out as I tried installing that I was missing zlib.h header file, i installed it by issuing the following command:

sudo apt-get install libz-dev

Then I navigated to the newly unzipped git directory again and did all of the following steps:

./configure
make 
make install

Everything went smooth and I did not run into any problems, but git --version still shows:

git version 2.7.4

Why is that the case and how to fix it?

Edit:

Thanks Yaron, the problem has ALMOST been fix. the last step:

make install install-doc install-html

gives me the following error:

"ASCIIDOC git-revert.xml /bin/sh: 2: asciidoc: not found Makefile:334: recipe for target 'git-revert.xml' failed make[1]: * [git-revert.xml] Error 127 make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/omair/git-2.9.5/Documentation' Makefile:2367: recipe for target 'install-doc' failed make: * [install-doc] Error 2"

I have already, as suggested by "https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/solved-asciidoctor-asciidoc-not-found-in-path/10017/2" did these steps

sudo apt-get install asciidoctor

and when that failed,tried:

sudo gem install asciidoctor

still getting the error but the git has now been updated.

Answer 1

It seems like you have two versions of git in your computer:

1. Version 2.7.4 which was installed by root
   • You didn't remove the git version 2.7.4
2. Version 2.9.5 which was installed locally by your user
   • You didn't update your path to use git 2.9.5 instead of git 2.7.4
   • You didn't install git as user root

In order to use git version 2.9.5, you can:

1. Use the newly installed git binary:
   • Find in your home directory, the location of the new git binary
   • Update your path to find first the newly installed git 2.9.5
2. Install git as root (see info taken from INSTALL file in git-2.17.0.tar.gz package - please review the INSTALL file in source directory of your package for more info)

           Git installation

Normally you can just do "make" followed by "make install", and that will install the git programs in your own ~/bin/ directory. If you want to do a global install, you can do

    $ make prefix=/usr all doc info ;# as yourself
    # make prefix=/usr install install-doc install-html install-info ;# as root

(or prefix=/usr/local, of course). Just like any program suite that uses $prefix, the built results have some paths encoded, which are derived from $prefix, so "make all; make prefix=/usr install" would not work.

The beginning of the Makefile documents many variables that affect the way git is built. You can override them either from the command line, or in a config.mak file.

Alternatively you can use autoconf generated ./configure script to set up install paths (via config.mak.autogen), so you can write instead

    $ make configure ;# as yourself
    $ ./configure --prefix=/usr ;# as yourself
    $ make all doc ;# as yourself
    # make install install-doc install-html;# as root