Cannot install Git on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Question

When I was trying to install Git on Ubuntu 16.04, I get an error. The command I used to install git is:

sudo apt-get install git

The error I encountered was:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  git : Depends: liberror-perl but it is not going to be installed
        Depends: git-man (> 1:2.7.4) but it is not going to be installed
        Depends: git-man (< 1:2.7.4-.) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or
specify a solution).

Even though I used the suggested command (apt-get -f install) to install git the error still persists. Anyone who has the idea to fix this problem?

Please try sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade && apt-get -f install — George Udosen, Feb 24 '17 at 06:19
Lets see if gdebi will help: sudo apt-get install gdebi && sudo gdebi git — George Udosen, Feb 24 '17 at 06:46
The previous solution (sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade && apt-get -f install) worked, I just had the 3 commands ran one by one. Thanks for the help — Chamber, Feb 24 '17 at 06:52
One down one more to go, glad it worked! Will be including answer for you to accept... — George Udosen, Feb 24 '17 at 06:53

score 19 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 29 '17 at 16:55

19

Some times our systems may not be up-to-date to receive an install so we can update with:

update package information:
```
sudo apt-get update
```
upgrade packages on system and fix broken packages in the process:
```
sudo apt-get -f dist-upgrade
```
only fix broken packages:
```
sudo apt-get -f install
```

edited Aug 29 '17 at 16:55

David Foerster

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answered Feb 24 '17 at 07:03

George Udosen

36,677

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 02 '19 at 08:17

I had the same problem with liberror-perl when trying to install git. The other answers (sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade && apt-get -f install) didn't work for me.

From manually following the chain of dependency problems by trying to install each package directly, it looks like the problem is with perl-base:

$ sudo apt install liberror-perl
  liberror-perl : Depends: perl but it is not going to be installed

$ sudo apt install perl
  perl : Depends: perl-base (= 5.22.1-9) but 5.22.1-9ubuntu0.5 is to be installed

$ sudo apt install perl-base
  perl-base is already the newest version (5.22.1-9ubuntu0.5).

So the perl package depends on an outdated version of perl-base. I'm not sure how that was caused, but I suspect at one point a newer version was available, perhaps from a temporary apt source that was later removed on my system. I fixed the problem by downgrading perl-base to the version perl wants:

$ sudo apt install -f perl-base=5.22.1-9

After that, git installs properly. Just in case there was a newer perl-base version available, I tried upgrading it, but the above version was also the latest version:

$ sudo apt install perl-base=\*
perl-base is already the newest version (5.22.1-9).
Selected version '5.22.1-9' (Ubuntu:16.04/xenial [amd64]) for 'perl-base'

As far as I know this should not cause any problems, but YMMV.

Cannot install Git on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

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