Git: Getting Started

Published: Jan 11, 2017 Tags: git Category: Engineering

Git is an open source distributed version control system, which plays important role in current software ecosystem. You may find many GUI Git tools like SourceTree, Github Desktop, TortoiseGit etc, however the best way to learn Git is to deep dive into the Git commands and understand the fundamental. Let's start the 'Git journey' by using the basic commands.

Install Git

First, go to Git download page: https://git-scm.com/downloads

Download and install the git on your operating system.

Initialize Repository

In order to use Git, you need to initialize a local repository first.

1mkdir FirstRepo
2cd FirstRepo
3git init

The folder and file operation commands will be slightly different depends on your operating system.

A hidden .git folder should be created by the above command. You can use ls -a to verify it.

Check Status

git status is a handy command to check the current repository status. It is recommended it is used from time to time.

If you use git status now, the console output will be:

1On branch master
2Inital commit
3nothing to commit (create/copy files and use "git add" to track)

Add Files

Let's add some example files and folders in the repository.

1mkdir SubFolder
2touch main.txt
3touch SubFolder\sub.txt

Use tree command to verify that two files and one folder are created in the repository.

1.
2
3├── SubFolder
4
5│   └── sub.txt
6
7└── main.txt

Type git status again, and the console output should tell you that there are 'untracked files'.

Commit to Local Repository

Go to the repository root folder, and run git add .

Type git status and you can see from console output that there are changes to be committed and no untracked files. (If you run the above command in sub folder, then only the files under subfolders will be tracked)

Run git commit command to commit the change to local repository, and you will encounter a vi look-like program to ask you provide the description for the up-comming commit. Type i and go into text edit mode; write down the description for the commit, like 'First commit'; then press Esc and :wq to save and quit that vi look like program.

If everything goes well, you will see that files are commit and git status will tell that nothing to commit, and working directory clean.

Commit to Remote Repository

In order to collaborate with other developers, you need to publish the repository to a remote repository or a center repository like GitHub.

Now go to GitHub do the registration, create a repository on GitHub, and get the git URL of the repository.

The URL looks like: https://github.com/{username}/{repositoryname}.git

Use the following command to 'push' your local repository to the Github:

1git push --set-upstream https://github.com/{username}/{repositoryname}.git master

You will be asked to enter your Github user name and credential. After the 'push' command succeeds, you can see the files appear on the Github repository.

Congratulations! You manage to use the basic git commands.

Summary

Git commands are the best way to learn git, but it is not straight forward to understand and remember. Practice will help.

There will be following blogs explain further how to use git well and the git fundamental.

Written by Binwei@Oslo