The Full-Blown Allrounder
Some applications provide much more than just text-editing capabilities. Though tempting at first, you don't have to automatically go for the 'more is better' approach: Some people enjoy having a single tool for (almost) all of their development jobs, while others prefer to have many specialized, focused tools.
Panic's Coda is definitely one of the most full-featured development tools on the Mac. It aims to be your FTP client, your version control tool, and MySQL database editor. Along with its built-in web inspector and CSS tools, it's a perfect choice for web professionals.
JetBrains offers a whole range of development tools. Depending on the concrete programming language you're using, you might be more interested in their WebStorm, RubyMine, or PhpStorm apps. Taking WebStorm as an example, it features FTP deployment, a JavaScript debugger, and a unit-test runner.
In case you don't know Tower: it's the Git desktop client for Mac and Windows that helps thousands of developers and designers to easily & productively work with the Git version control system. Try it 30 days for free! Diff & merge apps are amongst the most underestimated tools. But a good one can be really helpful in a lot of.
- And file tracking and publishing. The sidebar can also be split to show multiple tools at once, on the left and/or right side of your editor. And you can drag your favorite tools into the sidebar dock at the top for one-click access. Nova also has Git source control tools built-in.
- Core.editor By default, Git uses whatever you’ve set as your default text editor via one of the shell environment variables VISUAL or EDITOR, or else falls back to the vi editor to create and edit your commit and tag messages. To change that default to something else, you can use the core.editor setting: $ git config -global core.editor emacs.
- GitHub Desktop is a macOS desktop client designed to help you connect to your GitHub account and manage your repositories, and other related activities, in a more intuitive and streamlined manner. For your convenience, GitHub Desktop comes with a setup assistant that will help you input your GitHub credentials and autofills the Git configuration.
- There are several options for installing Git on macOS. Note that any non-source distributions are provided by third parties, and may not be up to date with the latest source release. Install homebrew if you don't already have it, then: $ brew install git. Apple ships a binary package of Git.
The True Text Editor
A different kind of application concentrates solely on a single job: making code editing as good as possible. These very focused, traditional text editors are still quite popular amongst developers of all kinds.
BBEdit could almost be listed in the 'allrounder' category: features like its HTML preview, code cleanup, and an extremely powerful search go beyond simple text editing. Also nice to know: it's one of the tools with the longest history on the Mac, originally published in 1992 (yes, that's last century).
Another very popular editor is Sublime Text. It comes with a very stripped down user interface and a special 'distraction free mode'. Being available for Mac, Windows, and Linux, it's the perfect match for people that (have to) work on multiple systems.
Chocolat probably offers the most minimalist and beautiful interface in this category. As Textmate's inofficial successor, it comes with similar features (including support for Textmate's bundle system). However, features like its live error checking and window splitting make it an innovative app on its own.
The Fully Tweakable
Many developers are real tinkerers - and, as such, want to be able to tweak their tools, too. A new generation of editors was made with exactly this in mind: allowing users to configure and extend it at will.
Atom is one of these tools. Coming from GitHub, the makers of the popular code hosting service, Atom was made with extreme hackability in mind: you can tweak everything from its looks to its features.
Brackets is another app in this category. With Adobe as its founding father, it's also backed by a big player in the digital industry. Just like Atom, it's mainly targeted at Web developers - and also extremely bendable.
Of course there's more to choosing an editor than just looking at its specs. Most importantly, you simply have to like the tool, because you'll be spending countless hours with it. Have fun choosing your new toy!
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Install Git on Mac OS X
There are several ways to install Git on a Mac. In fact, if you've installed XCode (or it's Command Line Tools), Git may already be installed. To find out, open a terminal and enter
git --version
.Apple actually maintain and ship their own fork of Git, but it tends to lag behind mainstream Git by several major versions. You may want to install a newer version of Git using one of the methods below:
Git for Mac Installer
The easiest way to install Git on a Mac is via the stand-alone installer:
- Download the latest Git for Mac installer.
- Follow the prompts to install Git.
- Open a terminal and verify the installation was successful by typing
git --version
: - Configure your Git username and email using the following commands, replacing Emma's name with your own. These details will be associated with any commits that you create:
- (Optional) To make Git remember your username and password when working with HTTPS repositories, configure the git-credential-osxkeychain helper.
Install Git with Homebrew
If you have installed Homebrew to manage packages on OS X, you can follow these instructions to install Git:
- Open your terminal and install Git using Homebrew:
- Verify the installation was successful by typing which
git --version
: - Configure your Git username and email using the following commands, replacing Emma's name with your own. These details will be associated with any commits that you create:
- (Optional) To make Git remember your username and password when working with HTTPS repositories, install the git-credential-osxkeychain helper.
Install Git with MacPorts
If you have installed MacPorts to manage packages on OS X, you can follow these instructions to install Git:
- Open your terminal and update MacPorts:
- Search for the latest available Git ports and variants:
- Install Git with bash completion, the OS X keychain helper, and the docs:
- Configure your Git username and email using the following commands, replacing Emma's name with your own. These details will be associated with any commits that you create:
- (Optional) To make Git remember your username and password when working with HTTPS repositories, configure the git-credential-osxkeychain helper.
Install the git-credential-osxkeychain helper
Bitbucket supports pushing and pulling your Git repositories over both SSH and HTTPS. To work with a private repository over HTTPS, you must supply a username and password each time you push or pull. The git-credential-osxkeychain helper allows you to cache your username and password in the OSX keychain, so you don't have to retype it each time.
- If you followed the MacPorts or Homebrew instructions above, the helper should already be installed. Otherwise you'll need to download and install it. Open a terminal window and check:If you receive a usage statement, skip to step 4. If the helper is not installed, go to step 2.
- Use curl to download git-credential-osxkeychain (or download it via your browser) and move it to
/usr/local/bin
: - Make the file an executable:
- Configure git to use the osxkeychain credential helper.The next time Git prompts you for a username and password, it will cache them in your keychain for future use.
Install Git with Atlassian Sourcetree
Sourcetree, a free visual Git client for Mac, comes with its own bundled version of Git. You can download Sourcetree here.
To learn how to use Git with Sourcetree (and how to host your Git repositories on Bitbucket) you can follow our comprehensive Git tutorial with Bitbucket and Sourcetree.
Build Git from source on OS X
Building Git can be a little tricky on Mac due to certain libraries moving around between OS X releases. On El Capitan (OS X 10.11), follow these instructions to build Git:
- From your terminal install XCode's Command Line Tools (if you haven't already):
- Install Homebrew.
- Using Homebrew, install openssl:
- Clone the Git source (or if you don't yet have a version of Git installed, download and extract it):
- To build Git run make with the following flags:
Install Git on Windows
Git for Windows stand-alone installer
- Download the latest Git for Windows installer.
- When you've successfully started the installer, you should see the Git Setup wizard screen. Follow the Next and Finish prompts to complete the installation. The default options are pretty sensible for most users.
- Open a Command Prompt (or Git Bash if during installation you elected not to use Git from the Windows Command Prompt).
- Run the following commands to configure your Git username and email using the following commands, replacing Emma's name with your own. These details will be associated with any commits that you create:
- Optional: Install the Git credential helper on WindowsBitbucket supports pushing and pulling over HTTP to your remote Git repositories on Bitbucket. Every time you interact with the remote repository, you must supply a username/password combination. You can store these credentials, instead of supplying the combination every time, with the Git Credential Manager for Windows.
Install Git with Atlassian Sourcetree
Sourcetree, a free visual Git client for Windows, comes with its own bundled version of Git. You can download Sourcetree here.
To learn how to use Git with Sourcetree (and how to host your Git repositories on Bitbucket) you can follow our comprehensive Git tutorial with Bitbucket and Sourcetree.
Install Git on Linux
Debian / Ubuntu (apt-get)
Git packages are available via apt:
- From your shell, install Git using apt-get:
- Verify the installation was successful by typing
git --version
: - Configure your Git username and email using the following commands, replacing Emma's name with your own. These details will be associated with any commits that you create:
Fedora (dnf/yum)
Git packages are available via both yum and dnf:
- From your shell, install Git using dnf (or yum, on older versions of Fedora):or
- Verify the installation was successful by typing
git --version
: - Configure your Git username and email using the following commands, replacing Emma's name with your own. These details will be associated with any commits that you create
Build Git from source on Linux
Debian / Ubuntu
Git requires the several dependencies to build on Linux. These are available via apt:
- From your shell, install the necessary dependencies using apt-get:
- Clone the Git source (or if you don't yet have a version of Git installed, download and extract it):
- To build Git and install it under
/usr
, runmake
:
Git - Git Configuration
Fedora
Git Config | Atlassian Git Tutorial
Git requires the several dependencies to build on Linux. These are available via both yum and dnf:
- From your shell, install the necessary build dependencies using dnf (or yum, on older versions of Fedora):or using yum. For yum, you may need to install the Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) repository first:
- Symlink docbook2X to the filename that the Git build expects:
- Clone the Git source (or if you don't yet have a version of Git installed, download and extract it):
- To build Git and install it under
/usr
, runmake
: