Git and GitHub Setup

Create a GitHub Account

You should already be added to the GitHub Classroom for this course. If not, I suggest reaching out to me first. Otherwise, if you have your own reasons, you can create an account at github.com.

Install Git

• Windows: Download Git for Windows. This includes Git Bash, which is a great terminal for beginners.
• Mac: Install Xcode Command Line Tools: xcode-select --install
• Linux: Use your package manager, e.g., sudo apt install git or sudo dnf install git

(Windows users) Have Git Bash find conda

Quick one-time setup (paste into Git Bash) This will find Miniconda in common Windows locations, add the right lines to ~/.bashrc (that's a configuration file that gets executed every time you open a new terminal), and auto-activate base each time:

# 1) Create ~/.bashrc if missing
[ -f ~/.bashrc ] || touch ~/.bashrc

# 2) Append a smart Conda bootstrap only if not already present
if ! grep -q "### CONDA INIT (git-bash)" ~/.bashrc; then
cat >> ~/.bashrc <<'EOF'
### CONDA INIT (git-bash)
# Try typical Windows installs of Miniconda/Anaconda and source conda.sh if found
for CONDA_ROOT in \
  "$HOME/miniconda3" \
  "/c/Users/$USERNAME/miniconda3" \
  "/c/ProgramData/miniconda3" \
  "/c/Miniconda3" \
  "$HOME/anaconda3" \
  "/c/Users/$USERNAME/anaconda3" \
  "/c/ProgramData/anaconda3" \
  "/c/Anaconda3"
do
  if [ -f "$CONDA_ROOT/etc/profile.d/conda.sh" ]; then
    . "$CONDA_ROOT/etc/profile.d/conda.sh"
    # Auto-activate base on startup; change to 'false' if you don't want this
    conda activate base >/dev/null 2>&1
    break
  fi
done
unset CONDA_ROOT
### END CONDA INIT (git-bash)
EOF
fi

# 3) Apply it to your current shell
source ~/.bashrc

Configure Git

git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email "you@example.com"

Set Up SSH Authentication

1. Check to see if you already have a (public/private) key pair (by trying to print to the terminal the public part):

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

If this prints an output, you can skip to step 3.

2. Generate an SSH keypair (see this guide)
3. Upload public key to GitHub

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Copy the output, then visit github.com/settings/ssh/new and paste it in.

Test SSH Connection

Inside of the terminal, run the following command:

ssh -T git@github.com

If successful, you'll see a greeting message.