INTRO TO GIT

HOW TO WORK TOGETHER WITHOUT HATING

EACH OTHERS' GUTS
WHAT IS GIT?
Distributed Version Control System
This means that every machine has its own copy of the repository
De facto standard of VCS in the industry
GITHUB
One of the cloud hosts of git repositories
Collaborate with other developers across the world
We’ll host our central repositories here
REPOSITORY
Two types: Local and Remote
Local repository is the one that lives in your machine
Remote repository is the one that is hosted somewhere else (like Github)
Git repositories are housed in .git folder
This folder has information that keeps track of commit history of different branches of
your local repository
And other information, such as remote repository location
CREATING A GIT REPO
1. git init to create an empty local repository in one of your folders
2. Then create an empty remote repository in your git cloud host of choice
3. git remote add <short-name> <url-to-your-remote-repo> to add remote
repository information to your local repository
You can also create an empty remote repository first
git clone <url-to-repo> to clone the remote repository to your local machine
WORKING WITH REMOTE REPOS
git pull and git push to sync your local and remote repositories.
Pull to bring remote repo’s changes into your local repo
Push to update remote repo with your local repo’s changes
STAGING
A temporary place for your changes before you “save” them to your repository
Only the changes in staging will be committed
Add files to the staging via git add <path-to-file-or-folder>
View the current state of staging with git status
COMMIT
Committing saves changes on staging to the repository
Each commit has its own unique identifier
So you can track changes and rollback if necessary
Create a new commit with git commit with a meaningful message about this commit
See the commit history with git log
.GITIGNORE
Folders and files listed in this file will be ignored by git, aka git will not track changes to
these files
Examples of folders/files you should add to .gitignore:
Files that change every time you compile/build (ie. build outputs)
Sensitive information (ie. your DB connection string)
Have this file at the same level as your .git folder
GIT WORKFLOW
1. Initialize a repository and add remote or clone from a remote repo
2. make a change
3. git add (to staging)
4. git commit (to local repository)
5. git push (to remote repo)
6. (When you want to sync from the remote repo) git pull
BRANCH
Branch allows multiple developers to collaborate
over a source code.
Each project has one Main branch
This branch is the sacred branch, tread
lightly
Each developer checks out from the main branch
to work on their own feature
Branch per feature, not per developer
Name your branch wisely
BRANCH
To see all your branches in your repo
git branch
To go to another branch
git checkout <branch-name>
To create a branch
git branch <new-branch-name>: creates a new branch
git checkout –b <new-branch-name> : creates a new branch and checks out
to the branch
MERGING BRANCHES
Again, two ways.
1. Directly merging one branch to another
Quick and dirty, use this if you’re merging two local branches together
git merge <branch-name>
git pull <remote-repo> <remote-branch-name> will also merge the remote
branch to your local one
2. Raising a Pull Request (PR)
Preferred method if you’re trying to merge a feature branch to either dev or main
branch
Creates a PR on a remote repository that allows other people to review your code
for potential issues and merge conflicts
MERGE CONFLICT
When merging two branches, git tries its best to figure out which code goes where.
But sometimes, it needs human intervention to merge correctly without devastating
consequences
git marks the snippet of the code that needs human attention with both versions (local,
incoming)
Humans manually review the snippets and decide how that code should look like
It’s tedious but not a scary job.
BEST PRACTICES
Commit and Sync often
Small, frequent commits will save your life one day
Make sure your commit messages are meaningful
Push and pull from remote repository often
Start with the .gitignore file
Main is Sacred
When collaborating, avoid touching main directly, use PR’s instead
QUESTIONS?
DISCUSSION Q’S
What is git?
Git vs github?
What is repository? How do I create one?
Tell me a basic workflow of making changes to the code and then committing to the
repo
What are branches?
What is gitignore? What do you typically put in the gitignore?
RESOURCES
Git Cheat Sheet
Git official doc
For those git oh**** moments