Installing and Configuring Git

Introduction

Before you can track a project, Git needs to be installed and needs to know who you are — every commit you make is stamped with your name and email. This lesson takes about ten minutes, and you only ever do it once per computer.

Installing Git

Open a terminal and run git --version first — Git may already be installed. If you see a version number, skip ahead. Otherwise, install it for your operating system:

Introduce Yourself to Git

Tell Git your name and email. These are written into every commit you make, so use the email you will use for GitHub. The --global option means “use this for every repository on this computer”:

git config --global user.name "Priya Sharma"
git config --global user.email "priya@example.com"

These commands print nothing when they succeed — in the command line, no news is good news. Use your own name and email, of course. If you want to keep your email private on GitHub, you can use the special “noreply” address GitHub gives you in Settings → Emails.

Default Branch and Editor

When you create a repository, Git creates a first branch for you. Older versions of Git call it master; GitHub and most teams now use main. Set main as your default so your local repositories match GitHub:

git config --global init.defaultBranch main

Some Git commands open a text editor — for example, when you write a longer commit message or finish a merge. If you do not choose one, Git usually opens Vim, which confuses many beginners (to save and quit Vim, press Esc, type :wq and press Enter). If you use VS Code, set it as Git’s editor instead. The --wait flag tells Git to wait until you close the file:

git config --global core.editor "code --wait"

Finally, tell Git how git pull should combine your work with a teammate’s when both of you have new commits. Recent versions of Git refuse to guess and stop with an error until you choose. Merging is the simplest choice for beginners (lesson 10 shows when it matters):

git config --global pull.rebase false

Checking Your Settings

List your global settings to check everything was saved:

git config --global --list

You can also ask for a single value. Notice that this command does not use --global — it shows the value Git will actually use in the current folder:

git config user.name

Configuration Levels

Git reads settings from three places, and the more specific one wins:

Local settings are useful when one project needs something different — for example, using your work email only in work repositories. Run git config user.email "you@company.com" inside that repository, without --global. The global file is plain text; here is what the commands above produced:

cat ~/.gitconfig

Line Endings on Windows

Windows ends lines of text with two invisible characters (CRLF), while macOS and Linux use one (LF). The Git for Windows installer handles this for you by default: it stores LF in the repository and gives you CRLF in your working files. Because of that, you may see a message like this when you add files:

warning: in the working copy of 'index.html', LF will be replaced by CRLF the next time Git touches it

This is a harmless notice, not an error — your files are fine and your commit still works. The outputs in this course are shown without it, exactly as they appear on macOS and Linux.

Common Mistakes

Frequently Asked Questions

Key Takeaways

Summary

Git is installed and knows who you are. In the next lesson you will create your first repository — a small portfolio website — and make your first commits, watching exactly what Git reports at every step.