It is well-known that Debian stable release is very stable, i.e. the packages are very old and well-tested. However, this become a problem to me.

Since Git 1.9, we have to run the following command to silence a warning when we are running git push.

$ git config --global push.default simple

But this command will add settings to .gitconfig in the home directory, which is unknown to the git command from the Wheezy repository. And, unfortunately, I am using schroot to switch between Ubuntu 14.04 and Debian Wheezy. Can I install a newer git package on Debian Wheezy?

Yes, Debian Backports is the answer. Debian backports provide repositories that contains the newer software for Debian stable releases (with necessary modification.)

To install the packages from the backports, add the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian wheezy-backports main

Note: The URL can be any official Debian mirrors. Usually, there will be one line similar to deb [URL] wheezy main in your sources.list. You can copy the line and replace wheezy with wheezy-backport.

Update the local APT information with:

$ sudo apt-get update

To install the packages from the backports:

$ sudo apt-get install -t wheezy-backports [package-name]

For example, to install git from the backports:

$ sudo apt-get install -t wheezy-backports git