To work on the Sage source code, you need
The Tips and References chapter contains further information about git that might be useful to some but are not required.
First, try git on the command line. Most distributions will have it installed by default if other development tools are installed. If that fails, use the following to install git:
Finally, Sage includes git. Obviously there is a chicken-and-egg problem to checkout the Sage source code from its git repository, but one can always download a Sage source tarball or binary distribution. You can then run git via the sage -git command line switch. So, for example, git help becomes sage -git help and so on. Note that the examples in the developer guide will assume that you have a system-wide git installation.
Some further resources for installation help are:
The commit message of any change contains your name and email address to acknowledge your contribution and to have a point of contact if there are questions in the future; Filling it in is required if you want to share your changes. The simplest way to do this is from the command line:
[user@localhost ~] git config --global user.name "Your Name"
[user@localhost ~] git config --global user.email you@yourdomain.example.com
This will write the settings into your git configuration file with your name and email:
[user]
name = Your Name
email = you@yourdomain.example.com
Of course you’ll need to replace Your Name and you@yourdomain.example.com with your actual name and email address.