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Setting up Git and Github

Introduction​

Learning git is very important as we mentioned before, and you will become very much familiar with it. Don't stress out about the current lesson too much, the goal is to set you up, as we will cover more git in feature lessons.

Lesson Overview​

In this lesson you will learn:

  • What exactly is Git
  • What exactly is Github
  • Install and configure git
  • Create Github account
  • Connect Git to Github

Installing Git​

Follow guide on installing git depending on your own operating system (Note: These are external resources until we make our own guides). Only follow installation instructions for now, do not yet configure it.

Make Github Account​

Go to github.com and create an account. You will need a valid email where GitHub can contact you in the feature. This will also be default for identifying your contributions.

If you are woried about privacy

If you don't want to have sign-up email listed in your contributions, there is an option to hide it after you log in.

In Email Settings page, set these two options to ON.

  • Keep my email address private
  • Block command line pushes that expose my email This will prevent your email from leaking from your contributions. If you wish so, you can use the email generated for you by Github, which is shown in Keep my email address private section. Make sure you note it, as you will need it in the next steps.

Set up 2FA (Optional)​

To set up 2-factor auth, follow Configuring two-factor authentication.

Connect Git with Github​

For git to work as intended, you need to provide the credentials it can use to represent your local user (you) to Github.

Who Are You​

First, we need to tell Git what is your username and password. Enter the below commands, one by one, but make sure you provide your own (Github) username and email (be it your personal one you registered for account on Github or Github generated one).

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

Change Default Branch​

Github changed the name of the default branch from master to main so let's reflect that with this command:

git config --global init.defaultBranch main

Verify Your Inputs​

Before next steps, we should check if we have done everything good. Run these commands one by one and see if they match your information.

git config --get user.name
git config --get user.email

Create SSH Key​

SSH key is cryptographically secure identifier, like a long password used to identify your device. Github uses SSH keys to allow you access to your repositories without asking for a password each time.

First, let's make sure you have ed25519 algorithm already installed. Run the following command:

ls ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

If an error apears stating No such fule or directory then you do not yet have required key and you need to generate one. If no such message appears, you can proceed to the next step.

To create a new SSH key run the following command:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519

When it asks for the location, just press Enter for the default location.

Next it will ask for a passphrase; this is like a password for SSH key stored on your machine and you will be asked for it on each use of SSH key. If you do not use passphrase your SSH key will not be encrypted and can be seen or modified with other users of your machine. Enter one if you wish but it is NOT required to do so.

If you choose a passphrase enter it, or if you dont wish to use it, leave it blank and just press Enter.

Tell Github Your SSH Key​

Now we need go tell Github what is your SSH key. Open Github webpage, then click on your profile picture (top right corner), then Settings, then SSH and GPG keys. Then click on the green button that says New SSH Key.

Give your key some descriptive name, so you will know it belongs to that machine, and leave the window open while you complete the next steps.

Now we need to copy our public half of SSH key. To do this we are going to use that cat command we mentioned in the Command Line lesson. Open your terminal and run the following command:

cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

Select and copy whole output of the command, if you followed the instructions above, the output will probably start with ssh-ed25519 and end with username@hostname.

Now go back to Github window and paste the copied SSK key into the key field. Keep the key type as Authentication Key and finally click Add SSH key.

You are done, you have successfully connected your local Git with remote Github. All that is left to do is test the connection.

Test Connection​

Test your SSH key by following GitHub’s directions for testing your SSH connection. Make sure the fingerprint output in the terminal matches one of GitHub’s four public fingerprints.

You should see this response in your terminal:

Hi username! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.

Don’t let GitHub’s lack of providing shell access trouble you.

If you see this message, you’ve successfully added your SSH key and you can move on. If the output doesn’t correctly match up, then try going through these steps again or come to our Discord server to ask for help.

What's Next​

In the next lesson we take a look at basic git commands, what they do and we create our first repository, both local and remote, so let's jump right in!