Set Up Git

Now that you have Git installed, it's time to configure your settings. To do this you need to open an app called Terminal.

Need a quick lesson about Terminal?

Username

First you need to tell git your name, so that it can properly label the commits you make.

git config --global user.name "Your Name Here"# Sets the default name for git to use when you commit

Email

Git saves your email address into the commits you make. We use the email address to associate your commits with your GitHub account.

git config --global user.email "your_email@example.com"# Sets the default email for git to use when you commit

Your email address for Git should be the same one associated with your GitHub account. If it is not, see this guide for help adding additional emails to your GitHub account. If you want to keep your email address hidden, this guide may be useful to you.

Overriding settings in individual repos

Password caching

The last option we need to set will tell git that you don't want to type your username and password every time you talk to a remote server.

Good to know: You need git 1.7.10 or newer to use the credential helper

To use this option, you need to turn on the credential helper so that git will save your password in memory for some time:

git config --global credential.helper cache# Set git to use the credential memory cache

By default git will cache your password for 15 minutes. You can change this if you like.

git config --global credential.helper 'cache --timeout=3600'# Set the cache to timeout after 1 hour (setting is in seconds)

Good to know: The credential helper only works when you clone an HTTPS repository URL. If you use the SSH repository URL instead, SSH keys are used for authentication. This guide offers help generating and using an SSH key pair.