Setting up Git

Key points

Use git config with the --global option to configure a user name, email address, editor, and other preferences once per machine.

Configuring for the first time

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,
what our preferred text editor is,
and that we want to use these settings globally (i.e., for every project).

On a command line, Git commands are written as git verb options, where verb is what we actually want to do and options is additional optional information which may be needed for the verb. So here is how you could set up your computer:

git config --global user.name "User Name"
git config --global user.email "your_email@example.com"

Please use your own name and email address. This user name and email will be associated with your subsequent Git activity, which means that any changes pushed to GitHub after this lesson will include this information. The email address used should be the same as the one used when setting up your GitHub account. If you are concerned about privacy, please review GitHub’s instructions for keeping your email address private.

Optional: configure your favourite text editor

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 "bbedit -w"`
Sublime Text (Mac)	`git config --global core.editor "/Applications/Sublime\ Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/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)	`git config --global core.editor "c:/Windows/System32/notepad.exe"`
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.

Git (2.28+) allows configuration of the name of the branch created when you initialize any new repository. We will use that feature to set it to main so it matches the cloud service we will eventually use.

git config --global init.defaultBranch main

Branches

Source file changes are associated with a “branch.” 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. Otherwise by default, Git will create a branch called master when you create a new repository with git init (as explained in the next Episode). Read more on why master is now called main and the inclusive language decisions behind it here.

Branches are covered later in this workshop.

The commands we just ran above only need to be run once: the flag --global tells Git to use the settings for every project, in your user account, on this computer

We can review these settings and change the configuration if needed.

Re-configuring

To view your configuration, type into the terminal:

git config --list --global

This will give you an output like this:

user.name=yourusername
user.email=your_email@example.com
user.emaill=your_email@example.com
init.defaultbranch=main
core.editor=nano -w

We can make edits using:

git config --global --edit

Or, if we need to use a proxy, we can tell Git about that:

git config --global http.proxy proxy-url
git config --global https.proxy proxy-url

To disable the proxy, use:

git config --global --unset http.proxy
git config --global --unset https.proxy

To get further help with configuring, use either -h or --help:

git config -h
git config --help

More generally, Git help can be found here:

git help