Setting up Git#

Is Git available?#

Check if git is available on your machine by running

git --version

If git is not available you can follow instructions here to install git in your machine.

Basic configurations#

When we use Git on a new computer for the first time, we need to configure a few things. Below are a few examples of configurations we will set as we get started with Git:

  • our name and email address,

  • to colorize our output,

  • what our preferred text editor is,

  • and that we want to use these settings globally (i.e. for every project)

User info#

On a command line, Git commands are written as git verb, where verb is what we actually want to do. So here is how Jane sets up her new laptop:

git config --global user.name "Jane Smith"

git config --global user.email "jane.smith@university.ac.uk"

Note

You need to do this only once if you pass the --global option. If you want to override this with a different name or email address for specific projects, you can run the command without the --global option when you’re in that project.

Please use your own name and email address instead of Jane’s. Later on in this workshop, we’ll be setting up an account on Github so make sure you use the same email address. We recommend that you use your institutional email address.

You can check that they have been set correctly by running

git config user.name

git config user.email

Colours#

git config --global color.ui "auto"

Text editor#

Jane also has to set her favourite text editor, following this table:

Editor

Configuration command

Atom

$ git config --global core.editor "atom --wait"

nano

$ git config --global core.editor "nano -w"

BBEdit (Mac, with command line tools)

$ git config --global core.editor "edit -w"

Sublime Text (Mac)

$ git config --global core.editor "subl -n -w"

Sublime Text (Win, 32-bit install)

$ git config --global core.editor "'c:/program files (x86)/sublime text 3/sublime_text.exe' -w"

Sublime Text (Win, 64-bit install)

$ git config --global core.editor "'c:/program files/sublime text 3/sublime_text.exe' -w"

Notepad++ (Win, 32-bit install)

$ git config --global core.editor "'c:/program files (x86)/Notepad++/notepad++.exe' -multiInst -notabbar -nosession -noPlugin"

Notepad++ (Win, 64-bit install)

$ git config --global core.editor "'c:/program files/Notepad++/notepad++.exe' -multiInst -notabbar -nosession -noPlugin"

Kate (Linux)

$ git config --global core.editor "kate"

Gedit (Linux)

$ git config --global core.editor "gedit --wait --new-window"

Scratch (Linux)

$ git config --global core.editor "scratch-text-editor"

emacs

$ git config --global core.editor "emacs"

vim

$ git config --global core.editor "vim"

VS Code

$ git config --global core.editor "code --wait"

It is possible to reconfigure the text editor for Git whenever you want to change it.

Default Git branch naming#

Source file changes are associated with a branch. For new learners in this lesson, it’s enough to know that branches exist, and this lesson uses one branch.

By default, Git will create a branch called master when you create a new repository with git init (as explained in the next Episode). This term evokes the racist practice of human slavery and the software development community has moved to adopt more inclusive language.

In 2020, most Git code hosting services transitioned to using main as the default branch. As an example, any new repository that is opened in GitHub and GitLab default to main. However, Git has not yet made the same change. As a result, local repositories must be manually configured have the same main branch name as most cloud services.

To set main as your local default branch:

git config --global init.defaultBranch main

Note that if this value is unset in your local Git configuration, the init.defaultBranch value defaults to master.

Check your configurations#

git config --list

Need help?#

Always remember that if you forget the subcommands or options of a git command, you can access the relevant list of options typing git <command> -h, e.g.:

git config -h

or access the corresponding Git manual by typing git <command> --help, e.g.:

git config --help

More generally, you can get the list of available git commands and further resources of the Git manual typing:

git help

Additional references#