You may want to exclude build directories, binaries, or generated files. gitignore file to control which folders and files are tracked and published with Git. If you have an existing project that is not already in version control, use the following steps to set it up in Git: You'll need the HTTPS address to point Visual Studio for Mac to this repo. The next page gives you an option to display and copy either the HTTPS or SSH address to the repo you have created: To set up a Git repository, execute the following steps: The following example uses a GitHub host, but you can use any Git host for version control in Visual Studio for Mac. If you wish to use GitHub, make sure that you have an account created and configured before following the steps in this article. There are many remote hosts that allow you to work with Git for version control, however the most common host is GitHub. This means there is a single server that contains all the files, but whenever a repository is checked out from this central source, the entire repository is cloned locally to your machine. Git is a distributed version control system that allows teams to work on the same documents simultaneously.