You could either download the executable here, or use winget
If you choose to use winget, install it if you dont already have it through the Microsoft Store
And now run the following command in command prompt or Powershell
winget install --id Git.Git -e --source winget
Install Homebrew if you don't already have that, paste this into your mac terminal or linux shell prompt
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
And now you can use brew to install git
brew install git
If you wish not to use brew, you can also look at other meathods to install Git on Mac
Use the following command in your linux terminal
apt-get install git
For other distibutions of linux, please see install Git on Linux
Git configuration allows you to add configuration information (Name and Email) on three levels:
git config --systemsets configuration information for all users of the system- Applies to all users and their repositories
git config --globalsets configuration information for current user of the system- Applies to currently logged in user and their repositories
- Usage: When you have
git configsets configuration information for local project- Applied to the current repo on the system
When setting up git config you want to set up two main things, your name and your email address:
git config --global user.name "FirstName LastName"
git config --global user.email "user@emailaddress.com"
To link your git activity with your github, add the email address you use for git to your github
You can view current configuration, you can check running the following command:
git config --list
In order to make a new local repository using git, run the following command once you are in the directory you want to turn into a repository
git init RepoName
this creates a hidden .git configuration directory.
If you make a local repo using git and you wish to host it on github, install gh and then run the following command gh repo create
Instead of making a new repository, if you want to create a clone of a previously existing repository, use the following command
git clone {link to repo}
For the link after clone, replace that with the link for the github repository you would like to clone
Git does not know what files in the directory to track for the next commit, git add allows you to add files to be tracked for the next commit
git add .
The . paramter adds all files that have been modified to be added to the files being tracked. if you wish to add a single file replace the "." in the command above with the path to the file name (ex. git add README.md).
You can stop tracking files by using the following command.
git rm path/to/file
The same "." parameter can be used to stop tracking all the files that are currently being tracked (git rm .)
In order to see what files are being currently tracked by git, you may use the following command
git status
This command will only show you what files with changes are being tracked, this will not actually show you the changes. In order to see the changes, you can use the following command
git diff
Now that you have added files for git to track, in order to commit the changes (add them as a single update in the version control) you can run the following command.
git commit -m "Description of Change"
For now, all of your changes are local, in order to "publish" these changes you must push them to the remote repository. This can be done by doing the following.
git push origin
Branches in git allow you to split off changes from the main line
In order to see all current branches of a repo, you can run the following command
git branch
The "*" in front of the branch name indicates the current branch you are on
In order to create a new branch, you can run the following command
git branch NewBranch
Running this command will create a new branch but will not switch to it.
If you wish to change to another branch, you can use the following command
git checkout NewBranch
in order to compare the changes between two branches you can use the following command
git diff master .. NewBranch
In order to merge a branch, you need to first switch to the ancestor branch (the branch you are trying to merge into, which is usually main or master).
git merge NewBranch
You are able to delete branches by using the "-d" tag.
git branch -d NewBranchName
You can only delete after it is fully merged.