Discover how to set up Git for collaborative projects by inputting your name and email, allowing other developers to identify your contributions.
This exercise is excerpted from Noble Desktop’s Git & GitHub training materials and is compatible with updates through 2022. To continue learning web development with hands-on training, check out our coding bootcamps in NYC and live online.
Setting up Git
Git helps you to work with other developers. Because you want to know who worked on a file and how to contact them, you must tell Git your name and email.
Tell Git Your Name & Email
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To access the command line, do the following instructions for your platform:
- Mac: Go to Applications > Utilities and open Terminal.app.
- Windows: Launch the Git Bash app, which may be an icon on your Desktop, or in the Windows Start menu (probably in a Git folder).
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Enter the following command, replacing Your Name with your actual first and last name (but keep the quotes around it):
Git config—global user.name "Your Name" -
Enter the following command, replacing you@example.com with your actual email (but keep the quotes around it):
Git config—global user.email "you@example.com"
Keep in mind that changing the name and email will only affect future work.
Checking Your Git Setup (Name & Email)
To check the name or email currently set in Git, you can run the same commands, but without the value in quotes. So you’d use these commands:
Git config—global user.name
Git config—global user.email