git
So, I like working on Drupal in virtual machines, and my favorite is to use Ubuntu 8.04, because it's got PHP 5.2.x, which Drupal 6 works with better than it does PHP 5.3.x.  Unfortunately, the git that Ubuntu provides us with is from 1.5.x, which doesn't allow use of git clone --branch.  And the git
instructions seem to require those.  What to do?  Happily, you can compile git yourself:
- First, get rid of git if you've already installed it - 
sudo apt-get remove git-coreshould do that. apt-get install build-essential- Download the latest version of git.  
http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.7.4.1.tar.bz2works currently. sudo apt-get build-dep git-coretar xjf git-1.7.4.1.tar.bz2(or whichever version you downloaded)- Change directive into the new directory.
 ./configuremake
