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OS X (or Xcode) comes bundled with git 1.7.something, but after brew install git (1.8.0), which git keeps returning the old /usr/bin/git.

This is what I get when I echo $PATH right now:

/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:~/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin:/usr/local/git/bin

Shouldn't Homebrew stuff take precedence?

Also, I've no idea where that usr/local/git/bin comes from at the end.

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Have you verified that git is actually in /usr/local/bin? – Joe Nov 3 '12 at 1:45
yep. ls /usr/local/bin shows git is there. Brew also confirms that it's installed. I even ran the git uninstaller (both by brew uninstall and using the one that comes with the official git download) and redid brew install git. I keep getting which git = = /usr/bin/git". – Noam Gagliardi Nov 3 '12 at 2:00
Run which -a git to see if it's finding it at all. – Joe Nov 3 '12 at 2:04

2 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Got it. The answer is in your question; brew installs git to /usr/local/git/bin (not /usr/local/bin) but since that's after /usr/bin in your path, you get that one first. My comment for which -a git should have pointed you in this direction.

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Run ls -l /usr/local/bin/git too. I bet it is a symbolic link to /usr/bin/git. – Joe Nov 3 '12 at 2:10
Oh, and /usr/local/git/bin appears to be where the official installer puts it too. – Joe Nov 3 '12 at 2:13
You should look at /etc/paths and /etc/paths.d as well. – Joe Nov 3 '12 at 2:15
here's an interesting turn of events: which -a git returns /usr/local/bin/git; /usr/bin/git; /usr/local/bin/git. So I renamed the old git usr/bin/git_old and got it out of the way. Now git --version returns 1.8, proving that brew did install git successfully. -- Again, I renamed /usr/bin/git to its original name... and suddenly it's working properly! I don't know why or how, but renaming /usr/bin/git and running git once seems to have solved the problem. Who knows what the root of the problem was. Thanks anyway :) – Noam Gagliardi Nov 3 '12 at 2:18
That's ... odd. Glad you're up and running now at least. – Joe Nov 3 '12 at 2:25
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It’s been part of my Unix habits to have a ~/bin directory which I put at the start of my PATH. This is one of the first bits in my .bashrc:

case ":$PATH:" in
  *:$HOME/bin:*) ;;     # do nothing if $PATH already contains $HOME/bin
  *) PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH ;;  # in every other case, add it to the front
esac

With that in place, then selectively making just the Homebrew-managed git take precedence over the system version (instead of every Homebrew-managed binary), and just for your shell sessions (instead of all programs started from anywhere, including GUI programs), is as simple as symlinking it:

ln -s /usr/local/bin/git ~/bin/git
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