By default, CentOS ships with an old, old version of git. Move up one semi-major version to ensure compatibility with the rest of our setup
# yum install zlib-devel openssl-devel cpio expat-devel gettext-devel curl-devel perl-ExtUtils-CBuilder perl-ExtUtils-MakeMaker
# cd /usr/src
# wget -O git.v1.8.tar.gz https://github.com/git/git/archive/v1.8.5.6.tar.gz
# tar -xvzf git.v1.8.tar.gz
# cd git.v1.8.tar.gz
$ make prefix=/usr all
# make prefix=/src install