git tutorial

This is a short introduction to git, which is copied from the git tutorial on the sharepoint.

Installation

  • On Windows: There are several options for git under Windows. The Windows PowerShell already supports git, so no installation is really needed. To test if git is available, open a PowerShell and type git and press enter. If is not available, you can install it with winget:

    winget install --id Git.Git -e --source winget

    If you don’t want to use the PowerShell, you can install the official standard toolbox (https://git-scm.com/), which gives you the “Git Bash” and “Git GUI”.

  • Linux has git installed on almost all distributions. If it is not installed for some reason, take a look at https://git-scm.com/download/linux.

Execute the commands

git config --global user.name "Your name"
git config --global user.email "youremail@physik.uni-kassel.de"

with your name and E-Mail in order to setup your signature for the commits you will make.

Using git

Git is a version control system, which means that it can keep track of the changes you are making in a project folder (repository).

To setup a repository, create and go to a project folder with

mkdir path/to/your/project
cd path/to/your/project

and initialize it:

git init

Note

If you want to start using git, you probably already have files you want to add into a repository. However, a repository can not be initialized in a non-empty folder. To work around this, just create a new folder, initialize a repository and then copy the existing files/folders into this newly created repository.

With

git add -A

you tell git to track all files present in the project folder.

Note

You can track only specific files by dropping the -A and providing the path to files or folders instead.

Note

You can create a file called .gitignore inside the repository, where you can specify files and folders, which should not be tracked. This is useful if you have large data files or a bunch of unimportant files.

In order to save the state of the added files to the history of the repository, create a commit with:

git commit -m "Some descriptive message"

For more information on using git you can checkout the Learn Git Branching interactive tutorial. This is a really nice way to learn the basics (don’t worry, you don’t need to do all the chapters - the first few will already give you a good starting point).

Commonly used git commands

The following list of commands is not complete. It only provides a quick overview. For a full documentation see the git docs or use the command git help.

  • git init <repository name>

    Creates a new folder named <repository name> inside the current folder and initializes a repository inside this folder.

  • git add <filepattern>

    Adds some files into the local stage part of the repository. Patterns like * or *.py can be used here.

  • git commit -m "<Message>"

    Commits the currently added files with a message into the local repository.

  • git log

    Show the history of a repository.

  • git status

    Show the current status of the repository. Will show files that have been altered after the last commit.

  • git diff

    Shows detailes about changes made to files.

  • git push <remote> <branch>

    Uploads the given branch (usually master) of the repository to the given remote (usually origin).

  • git pull

    Downloads the current status of the repository from the configured remote.

  • git clone <remote-address>

    Clones a remote repository into the current local folder.

  • git checkout <branch/commit>

    Loads the status of the repository at a given commit or loads the given branch.

  • git remote <options>

    Configures or shows the remote repository for this local repository. Will be configured automatically if the local repository was downloaded via git clone.

Ressources