Setup instructions

Please work through all five steps below before the workshop. Each one takes just a few minutes.

TipAlready set up?

If you already have Git installed, a GitHub account, and GitHub Desktop signed in, you’re done — just complete the pre-workshop survey at the bottom of this page.

Step 1 · Install Git

Git is not installed by default on macOS. The easiest way to get it is to install the Xcode Command Line Tools:

  1. Open Terminal (search for it in Spotlight with Cmd+Space)

  2. Run:

    xcode-select --install

  3. A dialogue will appear asking you to install the tools — click Install and wait for it to finish (a few minutes)

  4. Once installed, verify it worked:

    git --version

    You should see a version number like git version 2.50.1.

Homebrew is a package manager for macOS that makes installing developer tools straightforward. If you already have it, run:

brew install git

If you don’t have Homebrew yet, install it first from brew.sh, then run the command above.

On a KCL laptop? Open the KCL Software Center and install both of these:

  • Git (x64)
  • GitHub Desktop

Installing both here means you can skip Step 3 below.

On a personal device?

  1. Download Git for Windows from git-scm.com/download/win
  2. Run the installer. The default settings are fine — click through and accept them.
  3. This installs both Git and Git Bash (a terminal for running Git commands on Windows).

Whichever route you took, verify it worked: open Git Bash (search for it in the Start menu) and run:

git --version

Step 2 · Create a GitHub account

If you don’t already have one, create a free account at github.com.

Use your KCL email address — it’s useful for research-related repositories and may give you access to additional features via GitHub’s academic programme.

Note

GitHub accounts are free and personal. You can add other email addresses to your account later, and your repositories stay with you if you move institutions.

Step 3 · Install GitHub Desktop

GitHub Desktop gives you a visual interface for Git — you can see your changes, write commit messages, and push to GitHub without using the command line.

  1. Download from desktop.github.com and run the installer
  2. Open GitHub Desktop and sign in with your GitHub account

If you’re comfortable in the terminal and prefer to use Git from the command line, that’s fine — both paths are covered in the exercises. If you plan to follow the command-line route in the exercises, install the GitHub CLI (gh) as well, because we’ll use it for GitHub authentication:

Then run gh auth login to authenticate Git and GitHub on your machine. When prompted, you can choose either HTTPS or SSH for Git operations.

If you want to use SSH, GitHub has a step-by-step guide here: Generating a new SSH key and adding it to the ssh-agent.

Step 4 · Configure Git

This step tells Git your name and email so they appear in your commits. You only need to do this once.

Open a terminal (Terminal on Mac, Git Bash on Windows) and run these three commands, replacing the name and email with your own:

git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email "you@example.com"
git config --global init.defaultBranch main
Note

The name here is not your KCL username, your KCL login ID, or your GitHub username — it has nothing to do with GitHub. It is purely a local Git setting: the display name that will appear on your commits. Use your first and last name in normal sentence case, e.g. "Jane Smith". Your real name is recommended so collaborators can see who made each change.

  • user.name and user.email — attached to every commit you make, so collaborators know who made each change
  • init.defaultBranch main — new repositories will use main as the default branch name (the modern convention)

These settings are stored in a file called .gitconfig in your home folder:

  • Mac/Linux: ~/.gitconfig
  • Windows: C:\Users\YourName\.gitconfig

Step 5 · Complete the pre-workshop survey

Please fill in the short survey below so we can understand your background and tailor the session:

→ Complete the survey

(Takes about 2 minutes. Closes 22 April.)

All done?

You’re ready for the workshop. See you on Thursday 23 April at 14:00 in Robin Murray A & B.