Setup Instructions

Last updated on 2026-09-04 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

  • What software do I need to have installed?
  • Do I have a GitLab account?

Objectives

  • Install VS Code and other needed software
  • Connect VS Code to code.ornl.gov
Callout

If you are participating in this workshop remotely (e.g. over Zoom), it is highly recommended that you use two screens: 1 screen with the remote meeting, to see the instructor sharing their screen, and 1 screen with your applications. You will need to have VS Code and a web browser open to https://code.ornl.gov in order to follow along.

Software Installations

Visual Studio Code

Download and install VS Code.

If you are new to using VS Code, you can review this Getting Started guide.

Git

You must have Git installed on your local computer. Typically, Mac and Linux computers come pre-installed with git, while Windows users must install GitBash (Git for Windows). However, you should verify that Git is installed on your computer.

You can verify git is installed by opening a command line application (e.g. Terminal) and typing:

BASH 

$ git version

If you see an error message stating git is an unknown command, you will need to install git.

If you do not already have git installed, you can refer to this GitHub guide on installing git for any OS.

Bash

You should have a Bash terminal. If you are on a Windows, you will have a Bash terminal by virtue of installing Git for Windows (GitBash). If you are on a Mac or Linux, you will already have a Bash terminal. If you prefer, you can use a similar terminal like Zsh.

Rather than using a seperate command line application, you will be using the Terminal in VS Code. To learn more about using the Terminal in VS Code, refer to these docs.

Connect VS Code to code.ornl.gov

First, you will need to open the GitLab SSH Keys Page and click “Add new key”. You will need to provide a private key to this form that can be generated with:

BASH 

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "your_email@ornl.gov"

It will ask you a few questions, but the defaults are sufficient for our purposes. Once done, it will write a file to $HOME/.ssh/id_ed25519. You can read this file with:

BASH 

cat $HOME/.ssh/id_ed25519

Copy the contents of the file with your computer’s clipboard, paste it into the GitLab form, and click “Add key”. Finally, we need to tell our computer to use this key when communicating with GitLab. We can do this by creating a file at $HOME/.ssh/config with the following contents:

Host code.ornl.gov
  PreferredAuthentications publickey
  IdentityFile /Users/qid/.ssh/id_ed25519

With this, your computer should be configured to communicate with GitLab properly.

Key Points
  • GitHub, VS Code, bash, and git are needed for this lesson