Developer's guide to GIT.
Learning to code.
What is GIT?
GIT is a open-source version control system that enables you to store code, track changes you have made to the code, merge code changes and recover earlier versions of code when needed.
What is Github?
Github is a hosting website that hosts Git repositories. There are also other websites which hosts git repositories like Gitlab etc. but Github is the commonly used one.
Well, before starting with Git commands you must know a few important terms.
Working Tree
The working tree or working directory contains the files that you are currently working on.
Staging Area or Index
This area contains all the added files that contain new or modified code which is ready to be committed. All modified or changed files are first pushed to the staging area.
Repository
Git repository contains all files of the project. It tracks changes done to your project i.e it holds all commits.
Git commands
There are a lot of Git commands but here is a cheat sheet of most commonly used ones:
1.git config
git config --global user.name "[firstname lastname]"
git config --global user.email "[email address]"
Used to configure an username and email address respectively to be used with all your commits.
2.git init
git init [repository name]
Used to start a new repository
3.git status
git status
It shows the status of your git means lists down all files that is being committed.
4.git add
git add [file]
Adds a file to the staging area or index.
git add *
Adds one or more files to the staging area.
5.git diff
git diff
This command shows files that are not staged yet.
6.git commit
git commit -m "[commit message]"
Records a file permanently in the version history.
7. git reset
git reset [file]
This command unstages the file while retaining the changes in working tree.
8. git clone
git clone [url]
Used to obtain a repository from an existing URL.
9. git branch
git branch
It lists all your branches. A * appears next to the current branch.
git branch [branch name]
It creates a new branch at new commit.
10. git checkout
git checkout [branch name]
This command is used to switch one branch to another branch.
11. git merge
git merge [branch name]
This command merges the specified branch’s history into the current branch.
12. git log
git log
This command show all commits in the current branch’s history.
There are many other git commands but these are the most needed ones. To know more refer to the Git website. Hope this article will help you understand git commands easily. Happy coding!
