Git Basics

Why version control, and why Git?

• Save time
• Make changes with confidence
• Reuse your work
• Collaborate with others

Some examples

• Sean Anderson
• ROpensci rFishbase

A quick demo tutorial

• Code School tutorial

Installing Git and related software

Mac OS X

• Open 'Terminal'
• Check if 'git' is installed
• If not, install from: Git for Mac
• Before running the first time, you must configure your name and email:

git config --global user.name "Matt Jones"
git config --global user.email "[email protected]"

• Optional: Install TextMate, and configure it as the editor for git commit messages

git config --global core.editor 'mate -w'

Windows

• Install Git Bash

git config --global user.name "Matt Jones"
git config --global user.email "[email protected]"
git config --global core.editor '"C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows NT\Accessories\wordpad.exe"'

Topics

• Version control systems
• Creating a repository
• Adding and committing files
• Working with remote repositories
• Using tags
• Branching and merging

Typical workflow

mkdir test
cd test
echo "This is a test file." > README.txt

# Initialize the git repository and start tracking files
git init
git status
git add README.txt
git status
git commit -m "Initial draft of README."

# Make some changes to the file and commit them
echo "===================" >> README.txt
git status
git add README.txt
git status
git commit -m "Added formatting."

# View the history of changes
git log
git blame README.txt

Working with remote repositories

Use git clone to copy a remote repository to your local host, and then use git push to write your changes back up to the repository.

git clone [email protected]:mbjones/pgame.git
git remote -v
git pull origin master
echo " " >> README.md
git add README.md
git commit -m "Added a newline to end of Readme."
git status
git push origin master

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title: Git Basics author: Matt Jones