Can't update RVM - “fatal: Unable to find remote helper for 'http'”

Question

I'm running RVM 1.1.6 on Ubuntu 8.04 and all of a sudden I can't update to the latest version anymore.

~ rvm get head

Original installed RVM version:

rvm 1.1.6 by Wayne E. Seguin (wayneeseguin@gmail.com) [http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/]

fatal: Unable to find remote helper for 'http'

Installed RVM HEAD version:

rvm 1.1.6 by Wayne E. Seguin (wayneeseguin@gmail.com) [http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/]

Googling for "fatal: Unable to find remote helper for 'http'" just gave me a few results, it seems like earlier versions of Git didn't support HTTP, but my Git version is fairly recent.

~ git --version
git version 1.7.3.2

Any ideas would be appreciated!

Answer 1

I ran into the same issue and it seemed that the git version was missing curl and expat support. I could resolve it by compiling the git version myself.

sudo apt-get remove git-core
wget http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.7.3.5.tar.gz
sudo apt-get build-dep git-core
tar xvzf git-1.7.3.5.tar.gz
cd git-1.7.3.5/
./configure --with-curl --with-expat
make
sudo make install

1. Remove the installed version
2. Download the latest .tar
3. Install all mandatory dependencies (maybe obsolete, as you had it already running)
4. Un-tar it
5. Configure the make-file with curl and expat extension
6. Install it

Answer 2

I had to also run this on Ubuntu 8.04 or it doesnt find libcurl.

apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev

Answer 3

With no sudo or root access I had to do things a bit differently. Perhaps as a result, using the usual ./configure --with-options route to configuring git did not work for me. Here's the steps I took in case it helps someone else:

export CURL_INSTALL_PATH=/path/to/install/curl
export EXPAT_INSTALL_PATH=/path/to/install/expat
export GIT_INSTALL_PATH=/path/to/install/git

wget http://curl.haxx.se/download/curl-7.28.1.tar.gz
tar xzvf curl-7.28.1.tar.gz
cd curl-7.28.1
./configure --prefix=$CURL_INSTALL_PATH

wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/expat/expat-2.1.0.tar.gz
tar xzvf expat-2.1.0.tar.gz
cd expat-2.1.0
./configure --prefix=$EXPAT_INSTALL_PATH

wget http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.7.12.1.tar.gz
tar xzvf git-1.7.12.1.tar.gz
cd git-1.7.12.1
make prefix=$GIT_INSTALL_PATH CURLDIR=$CURL_INSTALL_PATH
EXPATDIR=$EXPAT_INSTALL_PATH
make prefix=$GIT_INSTALL_PATH CURLDIR=$CURL_INSTALL_PATH
EXPATDIR=$EXPAT_INSTALL_PATH install