Harrix Installing Git + GitHub Desktop and Working with Them
This article explains how a beginner can install Git and start working with it through GitHub.
📖 Contents ⬇️
Contents
This article does not cover Git technology and its capabilities in detail. For that, there is the official book and many other resources.
Installing Git
Download the installer from https://git-scm.com/:
Figure 1: Downloading the installer for Windows
Do not be afraid of unclear explanations you may encounter during installation.
Start the installation:
Figure 2: Installer welcome screen
Figure 3: Choosing the Git installation path
Besides the default settings, I personally enable daily checks for Git updates and support for Windows Terminal. You can leave them unchecked:
Figure 4: Choosing installation settings
Figure 5: Choosing the Start Menu folder
When working with Git, you sometimes need to launch a text editor from the Git console. Here you can choose which text editor will open. If you have nothing special, choose the regular Notepad option Use Notepad as Git's default editor. I have Visual Studio Code Insiders installed, so I choose the option highlighted in blue:
Figure 6: Choosing a text editor for Git
Previously, the initial branch in Git was called master. On GitHub it is now called main, because master historically refers to slaveholders. Choose main as the initial branch name:
Figure 7: Choosing the initial branch name
Next comes the choice of how Git will be called from the command line. Leave the default so that Git works everywhere but does not overwrite standard Windows console commands:
Figure 8: PATH configuration
If you are not familiar with SSH and do not want to customize anything, choose the default:
Figure 9: SSH configuration
Again, the standard SSL settings will suit us:
Figure 10: SSL configuration
In Windows, lines in text documents end with two characters \r\n, while in Linux they end only with \n. This causes problems when the same text documents are processed on different operating systems. Since we are installing on Windows but still want standard Git behavior, lines will enter Git with \n at the end. In short, leave everything as default:
Figure 11: Configuring line endings for commits
We will run Git Bash in the native MinTTY emulator (it is convenient, for example, when working with OpenSSL for some tasks). That is, leave the default again:
Figure 12: Configuring the terminal for Git Bash
Leave the behavior of the git pull command (downloading a remote repository to the local machine) unchanged:
Figure 13: Choosing Git pull behavior
Also take the default Git user authentication system:
Figure 14: Choosing a credential helper
In the additional settings, leave everything as default again (do not enable experimental features if the corresponding window appears):
Figure 15: Choosing additional settings
Figure 16: Installation progress
Figure 17: Finishing the installation
Git is now installed on your computer, and you can work with it fully through the console. But we want to work together with GitHub, so let us move on to it.
Creating a GitHub Account
GitHub and Git are different things. GitHub is a website where you can host projects using Git, plus various GitHub extras.
So, go to https://github.com/ and follow the Sign up link:
Figure 18: GitHub home page
Creating a new account has become much simpler than it used to be.
Enter your email, password, username, and country:
Figure 19: Entering Email
When you choose a name for your account, be careful. This step is important! Your future employers may see that name.
After that, you will need to confirm account creation by entering a code sent to your email:
Figure 20: Entering the code
Then sign in with your username and password (or via Sign in on the home page):
Figure 21: Signing in to an existing account
And now you are in your profile:
Figure 22: Signed in to an existing account
Creating a New Repository
A repository is a project in Git terminology. Create a new repository via the plus sign:
Figure 23: Creating a new repository
Only the project name is required (Latin letters). In the example I named it Test. Everything else is optional:
Figure 24: Project settings
Although the rest is optional, I will describe each item under a spoiler:
Repository parameter descriptions
Description — an optional description of your project. It helps with project search.
For example, I typed plot in the GitHub search, and in the search results I can immediately read a short description of each project:
Figure 25: Project settings
Choose visibility — if the project is in Private mode, only you can see it; projects in Public mode are available to everyone. Private projects used to be paid; now they are free.
Add a README — adds a README.md file in Markdown format to your project, where you can describe your project in detail. More details About the repository README file. These are the files you see when you open a project:
Figure 26: Example of a README.md file
Add .gitignore — adds a .gitignore file to your project. When you work on a project in some environment (PyCharm, Visual Studio, and so on), temporary junk files appear that should not be saved in Git. For example, in Qt a .pro.user file is created automatically on each computer. And in Node.js projects you should not put the node_modules package folder on GitHub, because it is created automatically after the npm i command via the package.json file. To avoid committing all this junk, .gitignore lists patterns of files that will not enter Git. When you check the box, a list of languages appears that will pick the right .gitignore contents for you:
Figure 27: Example of choosing a .gitignore file
And the repository https://github.com/github/gitignore or the site https://www.toptal.com/developers/gitignore offer many more .gitignore templates.
Add license — adds a license file to your project. There are many licenses for distributing software. For example, MIT lets you do almost anything with the code but removes any liability from the author. And the GNU GPL license requires those who use your code to make their projects open and free under the GNU GPL as well. You can also write your own license. In short, a license is simply a text file describing what a person may and may not do with your project:
Figure 28: Example of choosing a license
By the way, all three of these files can be added to the project later manually as regular files, so you do not have to choose them now.
So, you clicked the Create repository button, and a repository is created:
Figure 29: New repository
Note that the repository gets a link of the form:
https://github.com/[Your-username]/[Project-name]
For now the repository is empty (if you did not check Add a README file and the other options). In theory, you can create files here on the GitHub website (there is a blue creating new file link in the screenshot above), but it is better to do that only in extreme cases. We will create all files on the computer where we installed Git.
Installing GitHub Desktop
Again, after installing Git and creating a repository on GitHub, you can already work with the repository using the command line, which you will often have to do. But routine Git work is better done through a proper interface. There are many different programs for that, but we will use the official GitHub Desktop.
Go to https://desktop.github.com/download/ and download the installer:
Figure 30: Downloading the installer
Installation is quick but differs from standard installers. On the first screen you will be asked to sign in to GitHub:
Figure 31: Signing in to GitHub
Then you will be redirected to the browser. If you signed out of your GitHub account, you will need to enter your username and password:
Figure 32: Entering GitHub username and password
After that, you will be offered to link your GitHub account with GitHub Desktop:
Figure 33: Authorizing GitHub Desktop
After successful authorization, choose the correct email and click the Finish button:
Figure 34: Finishing the installation
Figure 35: Open GitHub Desktop
Cloning a Git Repository
Now let us clone our repository from the GitHub website to your computer. To do this, go to File → Clone repository…:
Figure 36: Menu item for cloning a project
Then select our repository, choose the folder where the repository will be copied, and click Clone:
Figure 37: Choosing a repository to clone
That is it. Our project is copied:
Figure 38: Repository in GitHub Desktop
By the way, here you can switch between different repositories:
Figure 39: Switching between repositories
And if you right-click a project and choose Show in Explorer, you will go to your repository folder:
Figure 40: Opening the repository folder
In the folder there will be a hidden .git folder, which you should never touch yourself (if you do not see the folder, hidden files and folders are hidden on your system):
Figure 41: The .git folder in the project
Working with a Project
Now in your repository folder you can do anything (except actions with the .git folder): you can save your project here, create files and folders, delete them, edit them in any program, and so on.
For example, I will create a text file test.txt with the contents:
First line
Second line
And I will add an image image.png:
Figure 42: Test image
Figure 43: Files in the project folder
Go to GitHub Desktop. In the Changes tab you will see the project changes: two new files were added:
Figure 44: Project changes
In games you deal with save points. Here such save points are called commits. A commit should have a title and an optional description.
It is better to name commits in English, starting with a verb in the base form. There should be no period at the end of the title. For example, for our case the commit can be named Add first files.
But all these naming rules are optional, and you can name it even I added the first two files or A pillow cannot hide.
In general, the title should explain the changes you made. Enter a title and click the Commit to main button:
Figure 45: Creating a commit
A commit (save point) will be created and shown in the History tab:
Figure 46: Commit history with the first commit
But the changes did not appear in the repository on GitHub, because the commit was created only locally. Send it to the server by clicking the Publish branch button:
Figure 47: Sending the commit to the server
This button is named that way only now, because this is our first commit. Later it will have a different name.
Now the changes appear on the GitHub website in our repository:
Figure 48: Repository on the website with the first commit
Let us make more changes in the project folder. For example, I will create a third text file test2.txt with the contents:
1 + 1 = 2
And I will change the contents of test.txt to the following:
Very first line.
Second line
Third line
That is, I added another file, changed something in one place in another file, and added something elsewhere. Go to GitHub Desktop. You will see the changes. Moreover, in the test.txt file you can see a list of changes: changes occurred in two lines. New lines are marked in green, and deleted lines are marked in red:
Figure 49: New changes
In the same way, create a new commit, for example with the name Create second test commit.
And in the History section the new commit will appear. Send it to the server by clicking the Push origin button (from now on this button will almost always be named that way):
Figure 50: Sending the commit to the server
The changes will appear on the website with our repository:
Figure 51: Changes in the repository on GitHub
That is how you continue to work. Make some changes in the project, create a commit with some name, and send it to the server.
Of course, working with Git is not limited to these actions, but this is the basics.