Git: Getting Started

Published

August 25, 2025

Installation & Configuration

  • Git - version control software
    • Note - MacOS usually comes with git pre-installed, so there is no need to install anything else.
  • After installing git, please configure it: Getting Started - First-Time Git Setup
  • The setup steps above should create a ~/.gitconfig file that has some barebones configuration options. We can expand that a bit by manually editing it with the following content:
[user]
    name = your first and last name
    email = yournetid@duke.edu
[alias]
    lg = log --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset' --abbrev-commit --date=relative
[core]
    editor = nano
    autocrlf = input
    preloadindex = true
    fileMode = false
[color]
    status = auto
    branch = auto
    interactive = auto
    diff = auto
    ui = auto
[push]
    default = current
    autoSetupRemote = true
[pull]
    rebase = false
[init]
    defaultBranch = main
  • The above configuration will:
    • Set your name and email address for commits
    • Set up a git lg alias that will show a nice graph of the commit history
    • Change the default editor for making commit messages from vi to nano. (Note, you can change this to something else.)
    • Set the default branch name to main (instead of the legacy master name). It is important to do this for our grading scripts to work properly.
  • This is a good tutorial on using git within VS Code: Using Git source control in VS Code

Setup Duke GitLab Account

While GitHub is a very popular public git repository hosting site, we will be using Duke’s GitLab server. Please make sure you can log into https://gitlab.oit.duke.edu using your Oath2 NetID authentication.

Warning

This is not gitlab.com!

Caution

Do not edit files in remote git repositories using the GitLab web interface!! Only work with your repository files using your local clone of the repository.

SSH Key Authentication

We will use SSH keys to authenticate us on GitLab to be able to clone/push/pull from GitLab without needing to always enter your username and password.

To setup an SSH key and add it to your GitLab profile:

Warning

The guide below will reference github.com; you want to substitute gitlab.oit.duke.edu.

  1. Generate a New SSH Key

    • While your private key is most secure by encrypting it with a passphrase, you will need to either enter that passphrase everytime the key is used, or you will need to add it to your local credential manager (i.e., keychain) or ssh-agent to keep it unlocked.
    • If you are just using this SSH key for this class, you can use an empty passphrase and not need to worry about needing to deal with the password management.

  2. Add your SSH key to your GitLab Profile

Warning

The guide above will reference gitlab.com; you want to substitute gitlab.oit.duke.edu.

Git Tutorials

We are going to cover git extensively in class, but it can really help to review some tutorials ahead of time to get familiar with the nomenclature and high-level overview of the workflow. If you have never used git before, I would recommend reviewing the following tutorials:

More comprehensive git documentation can be found at https://git-scm.com/doc.