Getting Started

This page covers installing Git and the handful of settings you need before your first commit.

1. Install Git

Verify it installed correctly:

git --version

2. Set your identity

Every commit records an author name and email. Set these once, globally, and every repository on the machine will use them unless overridden:

git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email "you@example.com"

To use different identity per project (common if you separate work and personal commits), drop --global and run the same commands from inside that repository — the setting is written to .git/config instead of ~/.gitconfig.

3. Pick a default editor

Git opens an editor for commit messages, interactive rebases, and merge conflicts when you don’t pass -m. The default is usually vi; change it if you’d rather use something else:

git config --global core.editor "nano"        # or "code --wait", "vim", etc.

4. Set the default branch name (optional)

Since Git 2.28, the initial branch name on git init is configurable. Most hosts (GitHub, GitLab) default new repositories to main:

git config --global init.defaultBranch main

5. Create or clone your first repository

Starting a brand-new project:

mkdir my-project && cd my-project
git init

Or grab an existing one:

git clone https://github.com/git/git.git

Continue to Basic Workflow for the everyday add/commit/push loop, or How Git Works if you’d like to understand what git init actually created before touching anything else.

6. Authenticating with a remote host

Pushing to GitHub, GitLab, or similar over HTTPS now requires a personal access token instead of your account password — generate one from the host’s settings and use it in place of a password when prompted. Over SSH, generate a key pair and add the public key to your account instead:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "you@example.com"
cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub    # paste this into your host's SSH keys settings

See Configuration for credential helpers that avoid re-entering a token on every push.