Introduction to Basic Git Commands

What is git?

Git is a version control system. While there are numerous uses for git, we highlight using it to manage the changes you make to your project. Check out the links at the bottom for some more ideas and uses for git.

Basic commands

Git stores everything in a git repository. To retrieve a git repository, there are two options. You can either initialize a new repository in a project’s directory or you can clone one from a public git repository.

Initialize a new repository

To create a repository for an existing directory of files, cd into the home directory of your project and initialize the repository:

git init 

Clone an existing repository

To create a copy of an existing project, run the git clone command with the URL for the project you want

git clone git://github.com/radiant/radiant.git 

Working in the repository

Think of git as taking snapshots of your files. You can edit and manipulate your files to how you want them, then you can send them to the staging area, and then you can take a snapshot of these files.

To add a list of files (README and test.rb) you can use:

git add README test.rb 

Or you can add all files in the directory:

git add .

Lastly, you want to commit the code to the repository:

git commit -m 'first commit' 

The -m option allows you to append a message with the commit. Preferably something useful so that you can know what that commit is about.

To view the status of your files in your directory:

git status 

This tells you what files have been modified since the last time they were committed.

Tools

A great tool to use is a git history viewer. Git comes in with a built in viewer. If you cd into your repository and run the gitk command, you are presented with a nice GUI to view your git history. This is a very barebones viewer. If you want to have one that feels more native to your OS and have some more functionalities, look at GitX for Mac and tortoisegit for Windows.


If you have feedback or questions about this page, add a comment below. If you need help, submit a ticket with Engine Yard Support.

Comments

Article is closed for comments.