Installing and configuring git

In this page, we provide brief instructions for installing git and making useful configurations. For general resources for learning git, see git resources

Installing git

The following table briefly summarizes installation methods for git in various platforms:

Debian / Ubuntu	sudo apt-get install git-core
Fedora	sudo yum install git-core
Windows	Download and install msysGit
OS X	Use the git-osx-installer

For installation details, see git homepage for the most recent information.

Have a look at the github install help pages available from github help

There are good instructions here: http://book.git-scm.com/2_installing_git.html

Configuring git

Overview

Your personal git configurations are saved in the .gitconfig file in your home directory.

Here is an example .gitconfig file:

[user]
        name = Your Name
        email = you@yourdomain.example.com

[alias]
        ci = commit -a
        co = checkout
        st = status
        stat = status
        br = branch
        wdiff = diff --color-words

[core]
        editor = vim

[merge]
        summary = true

You can edit this file directly or you can use the git config --global command:

git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email you@yourdomain.example.com
git config --global alias.ci "commit -a"
git config --global alias.co checkout
git config --global alias.st "status -a"
git config --global alias.stat "status -a"
git config --global alias.br branch
git config --global alias.wdiff "diff --color-words"
git config --global core.editor vim
git config --global merge.summary true

To set up on another computer, you can copy your ~/.gitconfig file, or run the commands above.

In detail

user.name and user.email:

It is good practice to tell git who you are, for labeling any changes you make to the code. The simplest way to do this is from the command line:

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

This will write the settings into your git configuration file, which should now contain a user section with your name and email:

[user]
      name = Your Name
      email = you@yourdomain.example.com

Of course you’ll need to replace Your Name and you@yourdomain.example.com with your actual name and email address.

Aliases:

You might well benefit from some aliases to common commands.

For example, you might well want to be able to shorten git checkout to git co. Or you may want to alias git diff --color-words (which gives a nicely formatted output of the diff) to git wdiff

The following git config --global commands:

git config --global alias.ci "commit -a"
git config --global alias.co checkout
git config --global alias.st "status -a"
git config --global alias.stat "status -a"
git config --global alias.br branch
git config --global alias.wdiff "diff --color-words"

will create an alias section in your .gitconfig file with contents like this:

[alias]
        ci = commit -a
        co = checkout
        st = status -a
        stat = status -a
        br = branch
        wdiff = diff --color-words

Editor:

You may also want to make sure that your editor of choice is used

git config --global core.editor vim

Merging:

To enforce summaries when doing merges (~/.gitconfig file again):

[merge]
   log = true

Or from the command line:

git config --global merge.log true

Fancy log output:

This is a very nice alias to get a fancy log output; it should go in the alias section of your .gitconfig file:

lg = log --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)[%an]%Creset' --abbrev-commit --date=relative

You use the alias with:

git lg

and it gives graph / text output something like this (but with color!):

* 6d8e1ee - (HEAD, origin/my-fancy-feature, my-fancy-feature) NF - a fancy file (45 minutes ago) [Matthew Brett]
*   d304a73 - (origin/placeholder, placeholder) Merge pull request #48 from hhuuggoo/master (2 weeks ago) [Jonathan Terhorst]
|\
| * 4aff2a8 - fixed bug 35, and added a test in test_bugfixes (2 weeks ago) [Hugo]
|/
* a7ff2e5 - Added notes on discussion/proposal made during Data Array Summit. (2 weeks ago) [Corran Webster]
* 68f6752 - Initial implimentation of AxisIndexer - uses 'index_by' which needs to be changed to a call on an Axes object - this is all very sketchy right now. (2 weeks ago) [Corr
*   376adbd - Merge pull request #46 from terhorst/master (2 weeks ago) [Jonathan Terhorst]
|\
| * b605216 - updated joshu example to current api (3 weeks ago) [Jonathan Terhorst]
| * 2e991e8 - add testing for outer ufunc (3 weeks ago) [Jonathan Terhorst]
| * 7beda5a - prevent axis from throwing an exception if testing equality with non-axis object (3 weeks ago) [Jonathan Terhorst]
| * 65af65e - convert unit testing code to assertions (3 weeks ago) [Jonathan Terhorst]
| *   956fbab - Merge remote-tracking branch 'upstream/master' (3 weeks ago) [Jonathan Terhorst]
| |\
| |/

Thanks to Yury V. Zaytsev for posting it.