If you’ve never used git or github before, there are a bunch of things that you need to do. It’s very well explained on github, but repeated here for completeness.

  • Get a github account.
  • Download and install git.
  • Set up git with your user name and email.

    • Open a terminal/shell and type:

      $ git config --global user.name "Your name here"
      $ git config --global user.email "your_email@example.com"
      

      (Don’t type the $; that just indicates that you’re doing this at the command line.)

      I also do:

      $ git config --global color.ui true
      $ git config --global core.editor emacs
      

      The first of these will enable colored output in the terminal; the second tells git that you want to use emacs.

  • Set up ssh on your computer. I like Roger Peng’s guide to setting up password-less logins. Also see github’s guide to generating SSH keys.

    • Look to see if you have files ~/.ssh/id_rsa and ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
    • If not, create such public/private keys: Open a terminal/shell and type:

      $ ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your_email@example.com"
      
    • Copy your public key (the contents of the newly-created id_rsa.pub file) into your clipboard. On a Mac, in the terminal/shell, type:

      $ pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
      
  • Paste your ssh public key into your github account settings.

    • Go to your github Account Settings
    • Click “SSH Keys” on the left.
    • Click “Add SSH Key” on the right.
    • Add a label (like “My laptop”) and paste the public key into the big text box.
    • In a terminal/shell, type the following to test it:

      $ ssh -T git@github.com
      
    • If it says something like the following, it worked:

      Hi username! You've successfully authenticated, but Github does
      not provide shell access.
      

Next: Typical use