How to install Git and Git Extensions?

Ganesh Moota
3 min readSep 10, 2021

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Git Extensions

This article will guide you on how to download and install Git and Git Extensions on your Windows operating system, as well as address some of the most common issues that arise during the installation process.

Download Git from — https://git-scm.com/download/win

We will now install Git, so open the .exe file which we downloaded from the above link.

Git setup window

We will get the above setup window, keep everything default and click the next button, except for the step when it asks us to choose a default Git editor, where we should choose Visual Studio Code as our default Git editor, as shown below.

Choose Git’s default user

Open a command prompt and check the git version to see if the Git installation was successful.

D:\>git --versiongit version 2.33.0.windows.2

Now that we have Git installed, let’s download and install Git Extensions.

Download Git Extensions from:

All releases: https://github.com/gitextensions/gitextensions/releases

We will be installing version 3.5.3 as it is the latest release but you can still download any specific version of your choice.

Link to download git extensions v3.5.3: https://github.com/gitextensions/gitextensions/releases/download/v3.5.3/GitExtensions-3.5.3.12551-00604a59a.msi

Git setup wizard

After downloading Git Extensions, double-click the .msi file to open the pop-up window as shown above. Keep everything as default and click next until you reach the installation window.

Git installation window

The installation is complete, however, there are a few minor issues that need to be addressed before Git Extension can function properly.

Now that we have both Git and Git Extensions installed, try opening git extensions.

Git Extensions

Select: Tools > Settings > Git > Paths

  • Set command used to run git as “git”
  • Set path to the bin folder in git which contains Linux tools (.sh)
  • These values will be set by default if you have kept the installation path set to default while installing Git.
Git > Paths

Select: Git Extensions

Git Extension settings

We have resolved the issues which were based on Git and Linux tools that were already present in our machine.

We don’t have any merging tools installed on our machine that can resolve merge conflicts right now, so we’ll download and install the most common diff tool, Kdiff3, which is free.

Link to download Kdiff3: https://sourceforge.net/projects/kdiff3/files/latest/download

Kdiff3

Just a few more configuration settings and we are done!

Select: Git > Config

  • Enter your GitHub username and email
  • Select MergeTool as Kdiff3
  • Select Diff Toll as Kdiff3
Git > Config

If you have followed all the steps till here, select Git Extensions and this time you will find all the required settings as checked.

Hope you were able to install Git and Git Extensions successfully, but in case if you get any other issues while installation, comment it down I will be glad to help you out.

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