Software versions and requirements:
If you are on Mac, install XCode from the mac app store, git comes with it, WPI Lib installer requires Xcode
WPI Lib version 2024.2.1 https://github.com/wpilibsuite/allwpilib/releases/tag/v2024.1.1
WPI Lib Documentation 2024 https://docs.wpilib.org/en/stable/
Git (Github works with git, this is command line tool used to push code and other functions of github) https://git-scm.com/downloads (any version is okay)
GitHub Desktop (newest version is fine) https://desktop.github.com/
Install WPI Lib
ensure Xcode is installed if you're on a mac
visit https://github.com/wpilibsuite/allwpilib/releases/tag/v2024.2.1 (2.0GB) and download version 2024.2.1
open the iso / disk image
run WPILibInstaller.exe (if windows 'protects' you pc click "more info", then click the new "run anyway" button)
Start
Install mode set to Everything, Install for this User
Download for this computer only (fastest) (make sure to click next after it finishes)
It will now continue installing fully
If you had VS Code installed prior to installing WPI Lib, you can tell which one you just opened as the WPI one has a little W surrounded by a red polygon in the top right, in the same panel as your file tabs within VS Code
Install Git
If you have a mac with XCode installed, git is included and you may skip installing git entirely (If you want to make sure you have git, open your terminal and just type git (Doing this should give a huge list of commands and other stuff, if it does, DON'T INSTALL GIT))
Make sure you don't already have git by typing git into the command prompt (You will see "'git' is not recognized") this means you don't have git and need to install it
Install the 64 bit version for windows setup at https://git-scm.com/downloads (262.4MB) (DO NOT INSTALL THE WINDOWS PORTABLE VERSION)
Whatever the latest version of git you can download is fine (As of January 2024, its version 2.43.0)
Run the executable
Click next and select your prefered installation location, and press next again
You will see a list of checkboxes, and a prompt to select components. Whatever is selected by default is fine
Click next until it starts installing, which you will need to do multiple times as there are a lot of windows. Do not change anything from default (especially not the experimental features, which are left completely blank by default and can be ignored since the installer is self sufficient)
After installation finishes, select what you want to do next from the check boxes (either launch git and/or look at the changes) you can uncheck both of these if you don't care. Opening git will give you the git specific command prompt, which has linux commands and fancy colors. Either the git command prompt or the regular command prompt is okay for the purposes of checking the install
If you already had your command prompt open prior to installing git, close and reopen it (This will refresh the prompt and adjust to the changes made by git)
To test if git installed correctly, type git into your command prompt, just as we did earlier, and you should see a huge list of command options and a whole lot of words (don't worry about reading all that nonsense right now, it's only important if you plan on using the git terminal to manage GitHub (nerd perk required))
Install GitHub Desktop
GitHub Desktop is a nice GUI tool that is used to communicate with git on your machine, and GitHub's servers. This tool makes using GitHub much more bearable and doesn't take much learning to get used to
Go to https://desktop.github.com/ and install GitHub Desktop. The version it gives you is fine, there's no specific version we need for this
Open the installer executable
Sign in or make your GitHub account
If you skipped the last step y̶o̶u̶'̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶b̶a̶d̶ ̶l̶i̶s̶t̶e̶n̶e̶r̶ you need to input a name and email so you can be identified by others when making commits and other forms of GitHuby activities
Congratulations, you now have GitHub Desktop installed on your computer
Happy Coding!