Git Setup on Mac

If Homebrew isn’t installed on your Mac yet. Let’s get that installed first.

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To Install Homebrew on macOS:

Open Terminal, then copy-paste the following and press Enter

/bin/bash -c “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)”

After it’s installed:

1. Add Homebrew to your shell profile

echo 'eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"' >> ~/.zprofile
eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"

2. Now verify installation:

brew --version

3. Then try:

brew install wget

Set Up Git (First Time Only)

Open a terminal and set your name and email:

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

You can verify with:

git config --list

Authenticate GitHub

If using SSH:

1. Generate SSH key (if you don’t have one): ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "you@example.com"
2. Add the SSH key to your GitHub account:
   GitHub SSH Key Setup Guide

Or use HTTPS:

You’ll authenticate with GitHub username + personal access token (instead of password).

Clone and Check Out the master Branch (if it exists)

mkdir gitrepo
cd gitrepo
git clone --branch master --single-branch https://github.com/username/repo-name.git

• --branch master: checks out the master branch directly
• --single-branch: avoids downloading other branches

Here’s a quick and complete checklist to push your files to GitHub — whether it’s a new repo or an existing one:

If You’re Pushing a New Project to GitHub:

cd /path/to/your/project

1. Initialize Git (if not already done)

git init

2. Add all files

git add .

3. Commit your changes

git commit -m “Initial commit”

4. Add remote (replace with your repo link)

git remote add origin https://github.com/your-username/your-repo.git

5. Push to GitHub (assumes branch is main or master)

git push -u origin main # or ‘master’ depending on your setup

If You Cloned a Repo and Just Want to Push Changes

cd repo-folder
git add .
git commit -m “Your commit message”
git push # uses the tracked branch (like main or master)

If You’re Not Sure Which Branch You’re On:

git branch # shows current branch
git status # shows changes and branch

To get the latest changes that were pushed to GitHub by another user, you’ll pull those changes into your local repository.

git pull origin main (# or master, depending on your branch name)

Optional: If You Want to Just Fetch First (Preview Changes)

git fetch origin
git log HEAD..origin/main –oneline # shows new commits not yet merged
git merge origin/main # merges them manually if desired