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Installing Git and Setting Up Accounts

Git is a Version Control System (VCS) that has gained a lot of traction among the programming community. We will want to use version control to keep track of the files we write, and the changes we make to them.

Account Creation

During the course we will show you how to use GitHub to host some of your work and do code related project management. You will need to set up an account:

  • Please register for a GitHub account
  • When choosing a username we recommend not using a name that includes an employer or university in case you move later on
  • i.e. 'johnsmith' or 'johnsmith86' are OK, 'johnsmithTilburg' probably not
  • Apply for the education discount by following these instructions
  • Don't worry, we won't do anything that costs money in this course, the benefit is you get some perks

Windows Users

We installed Git when we added a Bash Terminal in the previous step. Check everything worked by verifying your installation

Mac Users

Installing Git

We will install Git using Homebrew. Enter the following lines of code into your terminal:

$ brew install git
$ brew link --force git

Then close and reopen the terminal. Now Verify your installation

Git autocomplete for Older Macs (pre-2018)

On older generation Macs the terminal doesn't have this autocompletion for Git by default. Let's add it using our trusty friend Homebrew.

Open a terminal and enter:

$ brew install bash-completion

This installs 'bash completion' into a file /usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d.

To make the autocompletion work, type the following into your terminal:

$ echo "[ -f /usr/local/etc/bash_completion ] && . /usr/local/etc/bash_completion" >> ~/.bash_profile

And restart your terminal session:

$ source ~/.bash_profile

Now you can autocomplete by pressing tab twice after a command. Enter the following into you terminal and press tab twice (which we depict as [tab] [tab]) below:

$ git [tab] [tab]

which will then show the following (we only display the first and last few entries...):

$ git [tab] [tab]
add            blame          cherry-pick    ...         
push           repack         rm             ...
...
remote         revert         show-branch    tag

Linux Users

Git should be installed already for you. To check if it is, enter the following in a terminal:

$ git --version

If you get a bunch of numbers (ideally starting with 2.15) or higher - you are good to move on.

If not, install it by entering the following into the command line:

$ sudo apt-get install git

Once complete, verify your install.

Verifying your install

To verify your installation, type the following command in a terminal and press the return key:

$ git --version

You should get an output that looks like:

git version 2.18.0

Ensure that you have a version greater than 2.15.0 installed.