Git from ZERO to HERO — The Basics

A beginner’s guide for newbies getting started with Git.

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Git has now become an integral part of the development process and it’s really important for every developer to know about git. So without further ado, let’s GIT this party started.

The story of Git

Linus Torvalds

Git began with a bit of creative destruction and fiery controversy. During the early days, the changes in the Linux Kernel software were passed around as patches and archived files. In 2002, the Linux kernel project began using a proprietary Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCS) called BitKeeper. Everything was going fine until 2005 when the tool’s free of charge policy was revoked. This prompted Linus Torvalds and the Linux development community to create their own tool which is now popularly known as GIT.

Why Git?

While working on a project we normally create a final project folder and save it in a zip format. But after a few days, we might get new ideas to make the project better by adding a new feature that results in a new zip folder. And after a few days, it becomes very difficult to keep track of theses zip files and if we save each and every version of the project, our memory will also get exhausted. This problem can be easily tackled using git.

Another problem arises when we work on a group project. While making a project, we may have to collaborate with other developers and work along with them. To make this development process smooth Git is used. Git allows the team members to add and merge their code at the same time to the same project.

These are some scenarios where the use of git comes into play.

What is Git?

So what exactly is Git?

Basically Git is a distributed version control system for tracking changes in source code during software development. Now, what is a distributed version control system? Version control is basically a system that records changes to a file or set of files over time so that you can recall specific versions later. And distributed means that complete codebase — including its full version history — is mirrored on every developer’s computer.

Some features of git are:-

• Easy file recovery.
• It helps us to find the history of the changes created along with the information of the person who created it.
• It can roll back to the previous working state.
• Almost everything is local and after the final changes, we can push it to the remote server.
• Git creates snapshots to track files. Taking a snapshot basically means recording your files at any given point of time.

Public Git Hosting Services

Public git hosting services like GitHub, GitLab, etc are used to host and manage git repositories. They provide us with an online back up of our projects along with some other cool features.

The basic difference one should understand is that Git is a tool and GitHub (and other hosting platforms) is a service.

Git Installation and Setup

Follow these steps to get started :

• First, let’s Download Git.
• In windows, launch Git Bash which will allow you to use all git features in command line plus most of the standard UNIX commands. (You can also power shell)
• When git is used for the first time we have to mention the username and user email id. For that, we use the git config commands.

$ git config --global user.name "John Doe"
$ git config --global user.email johndoe@example.com

• To check if the username is set we can use this command

$ git config --global user.name 
or
$ git config user.name

And if it is set John Doe will appear in the terminal.

Three-stage architecture

The working directory simply refers to the folder in which the files are stored. The staging area is the place where we store the files which will go in the next commit. If we make some error in a file we can avoid staging that file alone also. Git directory is a .git folder which is a hidden folder that stores compressed files and allocates proper version of your project according to your command.

The . git folder contains all the information that is necessary for your project in version control and all the information about commits, remote repository address, etc. All of them are present in this folder. It also contains a log that stores your commit history so that you can roll back to history.

Initializing Git

First, to get started, you need to run the command git init.

$ git init

Git will create a hidden .git directory and use it for keeping its files organized in other subdirectories.

Adding Files to share

Before sharing the file we have to select the file to be shared and to select the files we use the command git add.

$ git add file_name

To add all the files in the folder you can use

$ git add .

Saving the added files

To save the selected file in we use the git commit command.

$ git commit -m "commit message"

A snapshot is created when we make a commit.

Saving the changes = Making a commit

A good commit message should explain the changes made in the file and should be short.

To edit a commit message

To edit the commit message we can use the following command

$ git commit --amend -m "New message"

Checking status of the file

To check the status of the files we use the git status command. It will show the untracked, unmodified, modified, etc files.

$ git status

Viewing the commit history

To view the commit history we can use the git log command.

$ git log

To view the changes we can use the git log -p command

$ git log -p

To quit we can press the Q key.

To view the last n changes we can use the following syntax

$ git log -p -n

We can also view the commit history as a short summary using this command

$ git log --stat

To view the commit in a single line, we can use the below command.

$ git log --pretty=oneline

short, full, etc format are also available. We can use these commands to find the commits according to our needs.

We can also filter the commit in git by n no: of days, weeks, months, and years.

$ git log --since=n.days

Adding a remote repository

Some important terms to know before using the command:

Repository: A repository is like a folder for your project. Your project’s repository will contain all of your project’s files.

Remote Repositories: Remote repositories are versions of your project that are hosted online.

Git uses the remote repository to store the shared file.

To add a remote repository git remote add command is used and for that, a remote URL is also required. We can easily get the remote URL from hosting platforms like GitHub.

$ git remote add remote_name URL

Developers normally use the name origin but you can name it according to your wish.

To check the remote name use the below command

$ git remote

Uploading files to a remote

After making the changes to the repository we need to upload the files so that developers can work on it. And to upload the files to a remote we use the push command.

$ git push remote_name master

Downloading Files from a Remote

To get the latest copy of the repository we download the files. To download the files from a remote we can use the pull command.

$ git pull remote_name branch_name

Downloading a git repository

We can create an identical copy of a Git Remote Repository to the local machine by using the clone command.

$ git clone remote_URL

You can also give the remote repository a name of your choice by using the following syntax

$ git clone remote_URL folder_name

Concluding words

That’s it from my side, I hope you found this post useful 😊. I won’t say that you can become a pro with the help of this post but this will definitely help you get started with git. And do check out the second part of this blog to get a deeper understanding of git.

If you want to get connected with me, please follow these links

Github-https://github.com/Sapna2001

LinkedIn-https://www.linkedin.com/in/sapna2001/

Website-https://sapna2001.github.io/Portfolio/

Quora-https://www.quora.com/profile/Sapna-191

And if you have any suggestions, feel free to get in touch with me over LinkedIn & the comment section is also all yours.

Thanks for reading!!!!