6. Initial Git Setup

When getting started with Git, a fundamental step is to set up your work environment. This initial setup is important to ensure that your contributions to projects are correctly attributed to you and that Git works according to your preferences. This chapter will cover the essential steps for configuring Git before you start versioning your projects.

Git Installation

Before configuring Git, you need to make sure it is installed on your system. You can check this by opening a terminal and typing git --version. If Git is installed, you will see the version you are using. Otherwise, you will need to download and install Git from the official website git-scm.com.

Identity Configuration

One of the first things to do after installing Git is to set up your identity. This is crucial because every commit in Git uses this information, and it is immutable for those commits. To configure your name and email address, use the following commands:

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

Replace "Your Name" with your real name and "youremail@example.com" with your email address. These details will be associated with all your commits.

Standard Text Editor

Git will open the default editor so you can write commit messages. By default, Git can use the system's default text editor, such as Vim or Emacs. If you prefer to use a different editor, such as Nano or Visual Studio Code, you can configure it with the following command:

git config --global core.editor "editor_name"

Replace "editor_name" with the command that launches your preferred text editor.

Configuration Check

After configuring your identity and text editor, it is good practice to check that the settings are correct. You can do this with the command:

git config --list

This command will list all Git settings. If you want to see the value of a specific setting, you can use:

git config user.name

Replace "user.name" with the configuration key you want to check.

Alias ​​in Git

To save time and avoid typing long commands repeatedly, you can set up aliases in Git. For example, if you frequently check the status of your repository, you can create an alias for that:

git config --global alias.st status

With this, instead of typing git status, you simply type git st.

SSH Key Configuration

To interact with remote repositories on GitHub without having to enter your password each time, we recommend setting up SSH keys. First, you must generate an SSH key pair (public and private) using the following command:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "yourmail@example.com"

After generating the keys, you must add your public key to GitHub. Go to your GitHub profile settings, go to the "SSH and GPG keys" section and add your public key.

Ignoring Files

Some files should not be versioned by Git, such as personal configuration files, temporary files, or dependency folders like node_modules in JavaScript projects. To do this, you can create a file called .gitignore in the root directory of your project and list the file patterns that should be ignored.

Conclusion

Initial Git setup is a critical step in ensuring that your work with code versioning is smooth and efficient. By setting up your identity, default text editor, SSH keys, and creating a suitable .gitignore file, you will be well equipped to contribute to projects and collaborate with other developers on GitHub.