Set up Git

GitHub’s documentation for setting up Git on a new machine is scattered across many pages. This guide collects all the necessary steps in one place to make the process easier.

Set user name and email

git config --global user.name "Mona Lisa"
git config --global user.email "YOUR_EMAIL"

Connecting to GitHub with SSH

Check for existing keys

Enter ls -al ~/.ssh to see if existing SSH keys are present.

If there are, follow this guide.

Otherwise, follow the steps below.

Generating a new SSH key

Create a new SSH key with:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "your_email@example.com"

At the prompt, type a secure passphrase.

Adding SSH key to the ssh-agent

1. Start the ssh-agent in the background

eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"
> Agent pid 59566

2. Check to see if your ~/.ssh/config file exists in the default location.

3. If it doesn't exist, create the file:

touch ~/.ssh/config

4. Open your ~/.ssh/configfile, then modify the file to contain the following lines. If your SSH key file has a different name or path than the example code, modify the filename or path to match your current setup.

Host github.com
  AddKeysToAgent yes
  UseKeychain yes
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

5. Add your SSH private key to the ssh-agent and store your passphrase in the keychain.

ssh-add --apple-use-keychain ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

5. Copy the SSH public key to your clipboard:

pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

6. Add the SSH public key to your GitHub account

Adding commit signature verification

Check for existing GPG keys

gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format=long

If there are already keys follow this guide. Otherwise generate new keys with the steps below.

Generating a new GPG key

1. Install GPG command line tools:

brew install gnupg

2. Generate a GPG key

gpg --full-generate-key

This will prompt you to configure the kind, size and length of the key, just press Enter for using defaults.

After that, it will prompt you to enter your user ID and user email (same email as in Github account).

3. Type a secure passphrase

4. Copy the GPG key ID

5. Use the gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format=long command to list the long form of the GPG keys and copy the ID (number after slash). In this example, the GPG key ID is 3AA5C34371567BD2:

$ gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format=long
/Users/hubot/.gnupg/secring.gpg
------------------------------------
sec   4096R/3AA5C34371567BD2 2016-03-10 [expires: 2017-03-10]
uid                          Hubot <hubot@example.com>
ssb   4096R/4BB6D45482678BE3 2016-03-10

6. Paste the text below, substituting in the GPG key ID you'd like to use. In this example, the GPG key ID is 3AA5C34371567BD2:

gpg --armor --export 3AA5C34371567BD2

7. Copy your GPG key, beginning with -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK------ and ending with -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----.

8. Add the GPG key to your GitHub account

Tell Git about your signing key

1. Set your primary GPG signing key. In this example, the GPG key ID is 3AA5C34371567BD2:

git config --global user.signingkey 4BB6D45482678BE3

2. Optionally, to configure Git to sign all commits and tags by default, enter the following command:

git config --global commit.gpgsign true
git config --global tag.gpgSign true

3. If you configured the GPG keys with a passphrase (recommended), install pinentry-mac and add it to your GNUPG configuration:

brew install pinentry-mac

echo "pinentry-program $(which pinentry-mac)" >> ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf

This will prompt you to enter the passphrase the first time you make a signed commit. If you check the box "Add to keychain" it will never prompt again.