Setup

In order to start working with git, you need to install it globally in your system

Git for Windows (opens new window)

Git for Mac (opens new window)

Now that you have Git on your system, you need to do a few things to customize your Git environment. You need to do these things only once on your computer, and they will stick between updates. You can also change them at any time by running the corresponding commands again.

Git comes with a tool called git config, which allows you to get and set configuration variables that control the look and feel of Git. These variables can be stored in three different places:

/ Etc / gitconfig file: Contains values ​​for all system users and all their repositories. If you pass the --system option to git config, it specifically reads and writes to this file.

~ / .Gitconfig or~ / .config / git / config file: This file is specific to your user. You can make Git read and write specifically to this file by passing the --global option.

Config file in the git directory (that is, .git / config) of the repository you are currently using: This file is specific to the current repository.

Each level overwrites the values ​​of the previous level, so the values ​​in .git / config take precedence over those in / etc / gitconfig.

On Windows systems, Git looks for the .gitconfig file in the \ $ HOME directory (for many people it will be (C: \ Users \ $ USER). It also looks for the/ etc / gitconfig file, although this path is relative to the MSys root, which is where you decided to install Git on your Windows system when you ran the installer.

Your identity The first thing you'll need to do when installing Git is to set your username and email address. This is important because Git commits use this information, and it is immutable in the commits you submit:

$ git config --global user.name "John Doe"
$ git config --global user.email johndoe@example.com

Again, you only need to do this once if you specify the --global option, since Git will always use this information for everything you do on that system. If you want to overwrite this information with another name or email address for specific projects, you can run the command without the --global option when you're in that project.