Getting started with Git

Download Git

You may download the Git source code from the official Git website and compile it yourself.

Git is also available from most Linux distributions package repositories and the Mac OS X MacPorts.

On Windows, MSysGit will be your best friend.

Basic setup

Git needs to know who you are when you make code changes, hence start by defining those informations:

git config --global user.name "John B"
git config --global user.email "john@be-root.com"

Everyone loves fancy colors, so do yourself a favor and get colored text output when using Git:

git config --global color.ui "auto"

IDE integration

Git is increasingly well supported among IDEs. If you think that Vim/Emacs/TextMate and Bash/ZSH do not form a suitable kind of IDE, you will be pleased to know that:

• IntelliJ IDEA supports Git out of the box (all editions), and
• the EGit project brings Git to Eclipse, 
• the Spring Tool Suite includes Git, and
• NBGit will also please the NetBeans users.

Using Git

We strongly suggest that you read the Git documentation as it contains lots of pointers to useful tutorials.

Given that Git is extremely good at branching and merging, we recommend that you always start a new branch for each task that you start.

Further readings

• http://oss.oracle.com/osswiki/GitRepositories/ForMaintainers by Oracle
• http://www.sourcemage.org/Git_Guide by the SourceMage Linux distribution
• http://www.slideshare.net/chacon/getting-git excellent slides by Scott Chacon