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Setup

Install git#

This tutorial depends on GIT. Take a look at the setup for instructions on how to set it up if you haven't done so already.

Configure git#

If it is the first time you use git on your computer, you may want to configure it so that it is aware of your username and email. These should match those that you have registered on GitHub. This will make it easier when you want to sync local changes with your remote GitHub repository.

git config --global user.name "Mona Lisa"
git config --global user.email "mona_lisa@gmail.com"

Tip

If you have several accounts (e.g. both a GitHub and Bitbucket account), and thereby several different usernames, you can configure git on a per-repository level. Change directory into the relevant local git repository and run git config user.name "Mona Lisa". This will set the default username for that repository only.

You will also need to configure the default branch name to be main instead of master:

git config --global init.defaultBranch "main"

The short version of why you need to do this is that GitHub uses main as the default branch while Git itself is still using master; please read the box below for more information.

Note

The default branch name for Git and many of the online resources for hosting Git repositories has traditionally been master, which historically comes from the "master/slave" repositories of BitKeeper. This has been heavily discussed and in 2020 the decision was made by many (including GitHub) to start using main instead. Any repository created with GitHub uses this new naming scheme since October of 2020, and Git itself is currently discussing implementing a similar change. Git did, however, introduce the ability to set the default branch name when using git init in version 2.28, instead of using a hard-coded master. We have chosen to use main for this course.