Making Git so easy, we say it's Magit!

Aaron Peters uses the Emacs Git client Magit to perform a long overdue update of his LXF repository.

- Aaron Peters

OUR EXPERT

Aaron Peters is a long-time Linux user, but still quite the Emacs neophyte. Nothing a few decades' more experience won't fix. In the meantime, being a software designer will have to suffice.

QUICK TIP

If you're interested in Magit but not Emacs, add the following to the end of the -/.emacs.d/ init.el file after installing to launch straight into Magit: (require 'magit) (magit-status)

Git was developed as a tool to manage the development of code by teams, including versioning and collaborating. In other words, a tool for developers. But its use is now so pervasive in the open source world that most serious users of Linux should be able to use it. While you may not write software, some applications' authors provide it for installation by cloning the repository. Additionally, participating in online projects may require you to make your contributions (see LXF298 for a summary of non-code input) to a GitHub or GitLab repository.

But Git is a sizable application, with lots of subcommands and options. If you're simply a studious Linux user, rather than a developer or sysadmin, you may not be called upon to use it every day. The learning curve can therefore be pretty steep. This article will introduce Magit, an Emacs package that provides what some call the best GUI for Git. Let's get started.

Why Magit? 

Magit (https://magit.vc) is a package for Emacs written in Lisp, so you need to install Emacs to use it. But why use this compared to some of the other GUI apps for Git? There's a couple of compelling reasons.