Setting up git

Basic git configuration

git config --global user.name "Rich FitzJohn"
git config --global user.email "rich.fitzjohn@gmail.com"
git config --global color.ui "auto"

Please replace my name/email with yours before pasting it into a terminal. If it returns no errors, then verify that these settings were saved into your configuration file (.gitconfig) by running:

git config --list
git config user.name

Line endings

Different operating systems have different ideas about line endings. To avoid headaches, on Windows run this:

git config --global core.autocrlf "true"

and on mac / linux type this:

git config --global core.autocrlf "input"

Configure your text editor

The simple editor nano is likely to be the simplest thing to use (at least on a Mac).

git config --global core.editor "nano --tempfile" 

The default is vi. If anyone ends up with a screen does not seem to respond to anything they type, you may have activated vi. Put your hand up and we'll help you out.

Other options: * "gedit -w -s" * "kate" * "subl -n -w' for Sublime Text 2.

Other editors

On Windows using Notepad++ in the standard location for a 64-bit machine, you would use:

$ git config --global core.editor "'C:/Program Files (x86)/Notepad++/notepad++.exe' -multiInst -notabbar -nosession -noPlugin"

(thanks to StackOverflow for that useful tip)

On Mac, with TextWrangler if you installed TextWrangler's command line tools then you should have an "edit" command. So you can use the git command:

$  git config --global core.editor "edit -w"