Version Control with Git: Save your progress! — Install Git

Imagine you are working on a small project and you just finished a new feature. You are happy to have made progress, and you go back home. You have your project saved in a USB, carrying it around between computers, and none of them has a backup of it. Why keep it in a specific computer if you’re going to make progress in another computer?

The next day, you notice that your USB is missing. You look everywhere for days, and you still find nothing. You lost your USB and, worst of all, your project.

Don’t let that ever happen to you. Use Version Control!

Version Control is an industry standard in the software / gamedev fields, where it lets you save and track your project’s progress online, gives you multiple ways to add, modify, delete or revert new changes, and allows multiple people to work in the same project at the same time!

For newcomers, I recommend using Git, a free open-source version control system designed to handle small or big projects with speed and efficiency. Once you have a handle of it, you’ll be able to use any other version control tool and learn how to use them easily (as they all share common features).

In this article, I will show you step-by-step how to properly install Git in your computer.

STEPS TO INSTALL GIT:

• Click here to open up the official Git webpage. Alternatively, you can just search “Git” on any search engine.

• Head to the “Downloads” section and choose your OS to start downloading Git.

You’ll see this options in the main Git page. If you want to skip clicking the “Downloads” section, you can click the button inside the monitor and get a direct download link to the lasted version of Git

Choose your Operative System and wait for the download to finish

• Run the Git executable, agree to the Git License and choose where would you want the Git files to be installed.
• For the rest of the installation process, click next for every step (we’ll keep the default values), except for the “Initial Branch name in new repositories” step, where we’ll select the Override option, type in “main” and continue. This is due to repositories no longer using the name “master” as the initial repository branch.

If you skip this step, you’ll likely have issues later on using Git.

• Let the executable install all the files and you’re done! To open Git, you could make a desktop shortcut for easy access, or you can always search for it in your computer by looking for a program called Git Bash (forget about the other Git programs you’ll see).

This is Git Bash. On Windows, it’s like the CMD, but designed only for Version Control

That was easy, right? In the next article, we’ll learn how to set up our own repositories using GitHub, how to start using Git, and learn the basics of Version Control. See you soon!

// EDIT: You can read the new article here: Version Control with Git: Save your progress! — Set up and Use!