2  Installing Git and GitHub Desktop

2.1 Installing Git

(It turns out that GitHub Desktop has a version of Git within it. If you only ever intend to use Git through GitHub Desktop you don’t need to install Git and can skip to the GitHub Desktop section.)

• Windows
  • Download and install from here
• macOS comes with an out-dated version of Git

  • I recommend installing the Homebrew version

  • First install Homebrew, see instructions here

  • Then run in your Terminal app

    brew upgrade
    brew install git

  • Additionally on a Mac it is helpful to install Xcode command line tools (i.e., avoid installing the whole of Xcode.)

    xcode-select --install

    • You must reinstall these tools everytime you upgrade macOS major versions, e.g., when you’ve upgraded from Big Sur to Monterey etc.
• Once Git is installed its executable (called git on macOS and Linux and git.exe on Windows) should be available at your command line

  • Check which version you have with (you want something recent-ish)

    git --version

  • On my Mac currently I have

    git version 2.39.1

2.2 Installing GitHub Desktop

• You could use Git through its command syntax however I recommend you use a graphical Git client

• For Windows and macOS download and install GitHub Desktop from here

• A Linux version of GitHub Desktop is available from here

• I recommend installing the free VSCode text editor, from here, and setting that as the “External editor” in GitHub Desktop options (Click: File | Options…)

  

• On Windows I also recommend installing Windows Terminal from here