Further Git and GitHub for Effective Collaboration: Setup

Completing this course requires you to have access to a computer with Git installed and a GitHub account. This course is currently being delivered in person and remotely so please make sure you have access to a suitable computer. All attendees should configure their recipe repository and be comfortable with using Git.

Configure your recipe repository

If you have completed our Introduction to using Git and GitHub for software development course, you should have a recipe repository in your GitHub account that will be used in this course. Make sure you have a clone of that repo in your home directory.

If you have not completed the intro course:

If you do not know how to do this, you can follow the steps in the “Configuring a remote repository from a local one” exercise in this lesson.

Install Git

Important!

If you do not already have Git installed or are not comfortable with using it for simple version control tasks, you should consider attending our Introduction to using Git and GitHub for software development course first.

Please follow the relevant instructions depending on your operating system.

Windows

  1. Download the Git for Windows installer.
  2. Run the installer and follow the steps below:
    1. Click on “Next” four times (two times if you’ve previously installed Git). You don’t need to change anything in the Information, location, components, and start menu screens.
    2. From the dropdown menu select “Use the nano editor by default” and click on “Next”.
    3. Ensure that “Git from the command line and also from 3rd-party software” is selected and click on “Next”. (If you don’t do this Git Bash will not work properly, requiring you to remove the Git Bash installation, re-run the installer and to select the “Git from the command line and also from 3rd-party software” option.)
    4. Ensure that “Use the native Windows Secure Channel library” is selected and click on “Next”.
    5. Ensure that “Checkout Windows-style, commit Unix-style line endings” is selected and click on “Next”.
    6. Ensure that “Use Windows’ default console window” is selected and click on “Next”.
    7. Ensure that “Enable file system caching” and “Enable Git Credential Manager” are selected and click on “Next”.
    8. Click on “Install”.
    9. Click on “Finish”.
  3. If your “HOME” environment variable is not set (or you don’t know what this is):
    1. Open command prompt (Open Start Menu then type cmd and press [Enter])
    2. Type the following line into the command prompt window exactly as shown:
    3. setx HOME "%USERPROFILE%"
    4. Press [Enter], you should see SUCCESS: Specified value was saved.
    5. Quit command prompt by typing exit then pressing [Enter]

This will provide you with both Git and Bash via the program Git Bash. You should be able to launch Git Bash from the Start Menu. Within the window that launches enter the command git --version and press enter. You should see output similar to the below:

git version 2.40.0.windows-1

MacOS

Apple provide a suite of UNIX-style command line tools that includes git. Install them by opening the “Terminal” app and running:

$ xcode-select --install
xcode-select: note: install requested for command line developer tools

This will open dialog that asks for your confirmation to install the tools. If it does not open a dialog, it may be because it is already installed (the error message will be clear).

To check the installation was successful open the “Terminal” app. In the window that launches enter the command git --version and press enter. You should see output similar to the below:

git version 2.37.1 (Apple Git-137.1)

If the above does not work, you may have and older version of MacOS. Try the following: install Git for Mac by downloading and running the most recent “mavericks” installer from this list. Because this installer is not signed by the developer, you may have to right click (control click) on the .pkg file, click Open, and click Open on the pop up window. After installing Git, there will not be anything in your /Applications folder, as Git is a command line program. For older versions of OS X (10.5-10.8) use the most recent available installer labelled “snow-leopard” available here.

Linux

If Git is not already available on your machine you can try to install it via your distributions package manager. For Debian/Ubuntu run sudo apt-get install git and for Fedora run sudo dnf install git.

To check the installation was successful open a new terminal. In the window that launches enter the command git --version and press enter. You should see output similar to the below:

git version 2.40.0