Start guide for Github.
Slightly tiled towards Windows platform.
- Install Git
- Install TortoiseGit
- Configure TortoiseGit
- Install Putty
- Generate private and public keys
- Add public key to Github
- Convert private key to Putty's ppk format
- Create a repository on Github
- Find the repository's URLs
- Clone the repository
- Prepare a README.md file
Git is available at here.
GUI git client is handier for me and the one I prefer to use is TortoiseGit.
TortoiseGit depends on programs shipped with Git to work. So make sure to install Git first.
TortoiseGit is available at here.
After the installation, some menus will be available when you right click a blank area.
More will be available if you are clicking inside a git repository dir.
Each git commit will include the commit author's name and email.
We need to configure the name and email in TortoiseGit.
Right click a blank area, select menu TortoiseGit - Settings.
In the Git tab, enter your name and email.
You need to use Putty's PUTTYGEN program to convert private key to Putty's ppk format,
as TortoiseGit only supports this format.
Putty is available at here.
The communication between Github's git server and our git client (i.e. TortoiseGit) is via SSH protocol. And public-private key authentication is required. Therefore we need to create our public and private keys.
To generate keys, we need program ssh-keygen.
Luckily, a ssh-keygen.exe program is shipped with Git.
Assume Git's root dir is git_root_dir, the program should be found at
git_root_dir\bin\ssh-keygen.exe
With the program available, the command to generate keys is:
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048 -N "" -C AoiKuiyuyou -f AoiKuiyuyou
- -t rsa
Key type is RSA. - -b 2048
Key length is 2048. - -N ""
Do not password-protect the key. - -C AoiKuiyuyou
Add comments AoiKuiyuyou to the end of the public key file. - -f AoiKuiyuyou
Name the private key AoiKuiyuyou. The public key will be named AoiKuiyuyou.pub accordingly.
Go to this page to add your public key.
Run program PUTTYGEN.EXE installed in this step.
Load the private key.
Save it as Putty's ppk format.
Go to this page to create a repository.
The only thing that has to be specified right now is Repository name.
For example, my Github username is AoiKuiyuyou, and my repository's name is AoikGithubQuickStart, so the HTTPS protocol URL for my repository is
https://github.com/AoiKuiyuyou/AoikGithubQuickStart
The SSH protocol URL for my repository is
[email protected]:AoiKuiyuyou/AoikGithubQuickStart.git
Now that you have found your repository's SSH URL, you can clone it to local.
Open the dir where you want to put the cloned repository,
right click Git Clone...
Enter your repository's SSH URL and your Putty ppk private key's path
Click Ok.
After cloned the repository to local, you should be able to push changes back to remote.
If a repository has a README.md file in its root dir, Github will render it as part of the repository's page content. (This page's README.md for example.)
A README.md file is written in GitHub Flavored Markdown.
Here are some readings:
Here are some WYSIWYG online Markdown editors:
Here is Github's official tool to render README.md file to html.
You can use it to render locally if online editors are not preferred.