Get Going with Git

What’s Git

Git is a free and open source distributed version control system.

This post serves as a set of notes to quickly refer to. For detailed explanations, see these excellent free resources:

• Pro Git by Scott Chacon and Ben Straub
• Happy Git and GitHub for the UserR by Jenny Bryan

Getting Going

Check to see if you have Git installed already:

• On Windows, open the command prompt and type git --version or search for the application Git Bash.
  • If you see git version 2.43.0.windows.1 or something similar, you’re good to go.
    
  • If you see git is not recognized as an internal or external command, you need to install Git.
• On Mac, open the terminal and type which git or git --version.
  • If you see something like /usr/local/bin/git or git version 2.39.3 (Apple Git-145), you’re good to go.
    
  • If you see command not found, you need to install Git.

To download or update Git

• go to https://git-scm.com/downloads and install like any other software
• to update on Mac with Homebrew: brew upgrade git
• to update on Windows: git update git-for-windows

Tell Git who you are

• at the terminal (mac) or command prompt or git bash (Windows)
  • type git config --global user.name "your name" (can be your full name or github username)
  • type git config --global user.email "your email" (should be the email you use with GitHub)
  • check the result with git config --list

Register a free GitHub account

• pick a username that is short, timeless, professional, and (preferably) all lowercase

Link your GitHub account and your local Git

• Git Credential Manager is the best way to store your GitHub credentials
  • on Windows, GCM is included with Git for Windows
  • on Mac, you can install GCM via Homebrew with brew install --cask git-credential-manager
• Create a new repository on GitHub
• Clone the repository to your local machine by running git clone URL where URL is the https web url of the repository you just created
• Follow the prompts to authenticate with your GitHub credentials

Git Commands

The basics

To copy down a GitHub repository to your local machine

• git clone https://github.com/your-username/your-repo.git to copy down a repository from GitHub to your local machine
• git remote --verbose to check the remote was cloned successfully

To add a remote to an existing local repository

• git remote add origin https://github.com/your-username/your-repo.git to add a remote to an existing local repository with nickname origin
• git remote --verbose to check the remote was added successfully
• git remote show origin to see more details about the remote

Most common workflow commands

• git add newdoc.txt to stage a file for a commit
• git commit -m "a commit message" to commit all staged files
• git push origin main to push local commits (on branch main) up to the remote repository (origin)
• git push -u origin main to push local commits up to the remote repository and have local main track remote main
• git pull origin main to pull down the latest changes (on branch main) from the remote repository (origin)

Checking status

• git status to check on the state of your repository
• git log --oneline to see a list of commits
• git diff to see the changes you’ve made since the last commit

Branching

• git branch [branch-name] to create a new branch
• git checkout [branch-name] to switch to the branch
• git checkout -b [branch-name] to create a new branch and switch to it in one command
• git checkout main to switch back to the main branch
• git merge [branch-name] (when on main) to merge the branch into the main branch

Intermediate

Coming Soon