2.1 Installing from an Elpa Archive

Magit is available from Melpa and Melpa-Stable. If you haven’t used Emacs’ package manager before, then it is high time you familiarize yourself with it by reading the documentation in the Emacs manual, see (emacs)Packages. Then add one of the archives to package-archives:

• To use Melpa:

(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'package-archives
             '("melpa" . "http://melpa.org/packages/") t)

• To use Melpa-Stable:

(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'package-archives
             '("melpa-stable" . "http://stable.melpa.org/packages/") t)

Once you have added your preferred archive, you need to update the local package list using:

M-x package-refresh-contents RET

Once you have done that, you can install Magit and its dependencies using:

M-x package-install RET magit RET

Now see Post-Installation Tasks.