How To Install Tig on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Tig on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Tig refers to the text mode interface for Git. It provides you with a very efficient user interface for interacting with Git. It functions mainly as a Git repository browser, but can also assist in staging changes for commit at chunk level and act as a pager for output from various Git commands.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Tig on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Tig on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Step 2. Installing Tig on Ubuntu 20.04.

By default, Tig is included in the Ubuntu 20.04 default repository. You can install it using the following command below:

sudo apt install tig

You can also verify whether Tig has been successfully installed on your system or not simply by checking its version with the following command:

tig --version

You can see all options available with Tig using the following command:

tig --help

Output:

tig 2.4.6

Usage: tig        [options] [revs] [--] [paths]
   or: tig log    [options] [revs] [--] [paths]
   or: tig show   [options] [revs] [--] [paths]
   or: tig blame  [options] [rev] [--] path
   or: tig grep   [options] [pattern]
   or: tig refs
   or: tig stash
   or: tig status
   or: tig <      [git command output]

Options:
  +       Select line  in the first view
  -v, --version   Show version and exit
  -h, --help      Show help message and exit

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Tig. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the Tig on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Tig website.