Setting-up your environment


Installing git on your computer

  • Linux: install git using your distribution's official package manager.

    • Ubuntu/Debian: apt-get install git
    • Fedora/centOS: dnf install git

  • Windows: download git from here and follow the installation instructions.
    When the installation is completed, open the Git Bash application from the Windows start menu. This application acts as a small Linux shell, with git and a few other basic GNU-Linux tools installed (e.g. the vim and nano editors).

  • MacOS: Download git from here and follow the installation instructions.
    After the installation completes, git should be available in your shell command line.


Configuring git

Add your user name and email address to git:
* git config --global user.name "FirstName LastName"
* git config --global user.email "your.email@sib.swiss"

Optionally you can also change the default editor used by git, e.g. if you are more comfortable with nano than vim:
* git config --global core.editor nano
* git config --global core.editor vim


Create a GitHub account

GitHub is a commercial online hosting platform for git repositories, currently owned by Microsoft.

We will use GitHub it in the last exercise, and you will need to have a (free) account to access it. If you do not already have a GitHub account, go to www.github.com and sign-up for a free account.

Then add your GitHub user name to this google doc document, so we can add you to the project for the last exercise.


Download exercise files

Download the exercise material exercise_data.zip from the course home page and unzip it.
That's it, you're all setup and ready to go!



Last modified: Monday, 24 February 2020, 1:26 PM