Installing the Tower Git Client (Mac/Windows)

To work with Git, you have two options: you can either install it on your operating system following this guide or you can use a dedicated Git client, like Tower (our tool of choice), which will install and set up Git for you.

A Git client offers many other advantages. Tower can:

• Assist in creating better commits by helping you select which lines belong to each commit.
• Make it easier to visualize changes made to your project by clearly highlighting code additions and deletions.
• Allow you to run advanced Git operations without constantly looking up the correct commands to type in the command-line interface.

As a Git GUI, Tower makes all of these tasks seem effortless. That said, there are two other unique features that make us highly recommend Tower:

• Undo: You can rollback any undesired Git action (such as creating a commit or merging a branch) by simply pressing CMD+Z (or CTRL+Z on Windows).
• Drag and Drop: You can use your mouse to reorder commits, squash multiple commits into one, perform merges, or cherry-pick commits (among other operations).

All right, let's see how to get started!

Getting Started with Tower

Installing Tower is very straightforward, and the process is similar for both Mac and Windows. You should start by downloading the installer from Tower's official website.

Once downloaded, run the installer to start the free trial. You can use Tower for 30 days free of charge (no credit card information or email registration is required). Tower is also free for Students and Teachers.

You will then be prompted to provide some information, including your name and email address. This information will be associated with each commit you make.

One neat thing about Tower is that you can set up multiple author profiles. For instance, you could have one profile for your personal projects and another one for work.

If you have a preferred Diff and Merge tool, you can define it in the setup process as well. You can always change these settings later by visiting Tower's Preferences.

Connecting a Remote Service to Tower

If you already have an account on a code hosting service like GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or Azure, you can connect it to Tower. This allows you to easily clone repositories to your local machine and start contributing to projects by pushing your changes and managing pull requests right in the client.

All you need to do is navigate to the "Services" view and pick your Service Account of choice (you can set up multiple accounts).

Exploring Tower

You are now ready to start using Tower and exploring all its great features!

To get familiar with the application, let's have a look at some of the most frequent Git operations:

• Cloning a project
• Creating a new branch
• Adding a new commit with changes

As an example, we would like to clone the popular open-source project Ruby on Rails. Simply click on File > Clone Git Repository…

Once the project has finished downloading to your local machine, you can create a new branch by right-clicking on the main branch and selecting "Create new branch from 'main'…" from the context menu.

You are now ready to contribute to the project. When you're ready, you can commit your changes to the project by visiting Tower's "Working Copy" view in the sidebar.

Finally, you can publish the new branch and push your changes to the remote repository by clicking on the "Push" button located in Tower's toolbar.

These are the essential tasks that you will frequently do. We highly recommend visiting the Tower website to discover all the capabilities of this Git client!