Noobie Git setup questions

Question

I was having question about the installing process of GitHub and what each option results in. I have never had any experience using the terminal or command line before either. So what exactly are the Windows Explorer options going to do and the differences betwen them and what I should choose? here in this image: http://help.github.com/images/bootcamp/bootcamp_1_win_install_5.jpg

And again with this image http://help.github.com/images/bootcamp/bootcamp_1_win_install_7.jpg I don't understand what the different choices are giving me and will result in?

Sorry for such a noobie question but I haven't managed to find an explantaion of the points listed so if you could shed some light on these areas would be greatly appreciated thanks!

All images are from the Help.GitHub set up tutorial: help.github (dot) com/win-set-up-git/

Answer 1

if you don't want to use the command line, you don't care about Git Bash. Git GUI is nice, though, and you might want to use it. For the rest, the defaults are very likely to be what you want.

The Windows Explorer options add items to the Explorer menu you get when you right-click on a folder. Bash gets you a command-line shell that you can play around with to use Git commands directly; Git GUI is the graphical front-end for Git. Eventually, you might need both.

As for the line endings: Windows uses different line-endings in text files than UNIX does. As Git was originally made for the Linux kernel, its line-endings are \\n (LF) characters - on windows, it's \\r\\n (CRLF). Git can treat (and in the beginning did treat) everything as a binary, though, so you can turn the conversion behavior off completely.

Also look at TortoiseGit , which may be helpful.

Answer 2

The default settings msysgit picks are all you need. It'd be nice if they simply had an "express" install that didn't bug you with all these settings you know nothing about.

I would also advise you don't turn off the line ending setting. It's best you leave that on the default, especially if you work with non-windows developers.