I happily compiled git 1.7.1.1 and installed it. Then I tried to clone a git repository through http I got a very strange error.

[host]$ git clone http://fortylines.com/reps/media/.git /var/fortylines/reps/media
Initialized empty Git repository in /var/fortylines/reps/media/.git/
fatal: Unable to find remote helper for 'http'
error: unable to complete: git clone http://fortylines.com/reps/media/.git /var/fortylines/reps/media
 (error 128)

Within a few searches, I found some help and proceeded to install the development packages for libcurl and libexpat before recompiling git.

[host]$ sudo aptitude install libcurl4-dev libexpat-dev
[host]$ cd git 1.7.1.1
[host]$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
[host]$ make
[host]$ sudo make install
[host]$ cd ..
[host]$ git clone http://fortylines.com/reps/media/.git /var/fortylines/reps/media