Setup and Initialization

Git Config

The first thing you're going to want to do is set up your name and email address for Git to use to sign your commits.

$ git config --global user.name "Scott Chacon"
$ git config --global user.email "schacon@gmail.com"

That will set up a file in your home directory which may be used by any of your projects. By default that file is ~/.gitconfig and the contents will look like this:

[user]
        name = Scott Chacon
        email = schacon@gmail.com

If you want to override those values for a specific project (to use a work email address, for example), you can run the git config command without the --global option while in that project. This will add a [user] section like the one shown above to the .git/config file in your project's root directory.