Skip to main content

Notes 🗒️

This markdown is a personal reminder to help me remember how to correctly setup my git repositories using command line and SSH connection/signing. This is not a full step by step guide designed for everyone, as it assumes you have already generated and added your SSH key to your GitHub account. I will keep this guide up to date.

First setup

  1. Setup username git config --global user.name "User"
  2. Setup email git config --global user.email "me@example.com"
  3. Setup default editor git config --global core.editor nvim
  4. Configure default branch name to be 'main' instead of 'master' git config --global init.defaultBranch main
  5. Configure Git to use SSH to sign commits and tags git config --global gpg.format ssh
  6. Set up the SSH key you would like to use git config --global user.signingkey /PATH/TO/.SSH/KEY.PUB
  7. Configure commit signature git config --global commit.gpgsign true

See git docs

Initializing repo 🚀

  1. Open git bash and locate your project directory cd PATH/TO/YOUR/PROJECT
  2. Init your git project git init
  3. Add your .gitignore template to your project, you can find good ones here
  4. Check the status with git status
  5. Add all untracked files git add ./ OR git add *
  6. Initial commit git commit -a -m "Initial commit"

Setting up remote 🌍

  1. Create a new empty repo on GitHub.com
    • DO NOT add a licence, or readme or whatever, we will do it afterwards, no need to create merge conflicts now.
  2. Set up remote git remote add origin ssh://git@ssh.github.com/USERNAME/PROJECT_NAME.git
  3. git branch -M main
  4. git push -u origin main
  5. You can now check if your commit was verified correctly on GitHub!

[!IMPORTANT] You encountered an error? Go check out GitHub Troubleshooting SSH guide

[!INFO] To make sure everything gets pushed to your remote: git push -u origin --all git push -u origin --tags

Adding README and licence files

Licence 📜​

  1. Visit https://choosealicense.com
  2. Add it to your existing repo

README 📑​

  1. Read https://www.makeareadme.com
  2. Create your readme easily on https://readme.so/editor
  3. Import it to your project, then commit & push

I am not a readme expert.

Other files 📝​

Useful links 🔗

[!TIP] You can check whether your SSH GitHub connexion works using ssh -T git@github.com. It should greet you with Hi USERNAME! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.