Notes on Git Version Control

computer

Author

Raunak Farhaz

Getting Started

To start with we have to configure the git in our own machines. To check whether git is installed or not we shall test it with following command:

$ git --version

This would give you some number as an output, if not then install git in your machine.

Configure your git config file:

$ git config --global user.name "Raunak Farhaz"
$ git config --global user.email "rubbish@gmail.com"
$ git config --global core.editor nano
$ git config --global init.defaultBranch main

And now to check your git config type

$ git config --list

Initialize a git Branch

Want to create a git repository?

$ git init -b main

Always check the status of your git repository in every actions

$ git status

Adding stuff for git to track

There are following selection of commands that one can use for adding files to be tracked by git.

$ git add [filename]
$ git add .

The second command will add everything in the folder.

Note

if you added something before and then added to .gitignore file to ignore, then it would still be tracked. Now in this kind of scenario one should remove the gitcache completely and add everything without that particular file to get a clean untracking.

Committing stuff

Once added for tracking you have to commit to create a certain timestamp, use the following command

$ git commit -m "creative commit message"

If you use the git commit command without the -m flag you would be eventually redirected to the git-default text editor to input a commit message.

In that case even if you keep it empty and save the file it will be an empty commit message for that timestamp.

Checking the commits

Once committed you need to see the timestamps, every timestamp has a unique hash-code.

Note

first 7 characters of hash is enough for uniqueness

The command for checking the timestamps is git log, the following commands can be useful.

$ git log --stat
$ git log --oneline

The first one gives long info and the other one is self-explanatory.

To check the timestamps one can create an alias called git graph which I use often for my machine.

Creating an Alias

git config --global alias.creative "creative command"

To create the git graph alias in your machine type the following:

$ git config --global alias.graph "log --all --graph --decorate --oneline"

Caution

What not to track?
Try to avoid tracking binary files, for eg. .jpeg, .png, .docx etc. Text files are always preferable.

Example : In \(\LaTeX\) files, .tex has to be version controlled only but not the .pdf files.

Branching git repositories

Want to git branch a repo that you like to edit but do not want to mess with the original? Use the branching commands

$ git branch branch_name main
$ git branch branch_name master

Note

The name master to the original branch is an old convention, the modern one is main.

List all the branches

$ git branch

Switching branches

$ git switch branch_name

Merging branches

$ git merge branch_name

It branches with the branch node it was branched from.

Deleting branches

$ git branch -d branch_name

Caution

-D flag instead of -d deletes unmerged branches

Note

If you remove the .git folder, you lose everything tracked in your local machine.