What is the best way to downgrade git into the 1.7.x series on a brand new Ubuntu 13.10 release?
I'm trying to find some ppa for this, but I'm not seeing any.
First install the git package from an Ubuntu release having Git 1.7 - say, 12.04 LTS (precise). Either download these manually and install them using dpkg (simpler option), or (if you'll also need lots of other packages from precise) add the precise package repositories to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ and install them using apt-get:
echo 'deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise main restricted universe multiverse' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/precise
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -t precise install git
Once that's successfully done, pin or hold the git packages in apt to prevent them from being updated. Pinning is the traditional solution (I've used this on Debian or Ubuntu for years) - see the linked howto for more info on this. Holding is the newer approach and looks far simpler/easier:
sudo apt-mark hold git