Git and Github Guide

###About Git and Github

What is Git?

Git is a version control system.

What is a version control system (VCS)?

What is “version control”, and why should you care? Version control is a system that records changes to a file or set of files over time so that you can recall specific versions later. It allows you to:

• revert files back to a previous state
• revert entire projects back to a previous state
• compare changes over time
• see who last modified something that might be causing a problem
• who introduced an issue, and when
• recover from screwed up or lost files

What if git wasn't used and a bug is discovered?

• Don't know when the bug was introduced and what code caused it
• Can't reset code to a previous version
• Don't know who introduced the bug
• Can't have different versions of code (production versus not-in-production)

What is github?

Although git can be used to track your own personal files, github is what allows large teams to collaborate on a single project. Github is a web-based Git repository hosting service. It hosts and tracks the files in your projects. It provides:

• access control (who can see what)
• wikis/documentation/READMEs for projects
• task management
• bug tracking
• feature requests

Which makes Github excellent for collaboration. The open-source community especially loves using Github. So do hackathon teammates, and technical recruiters.

Gitting Started (get it?)

Operating System	Download/Install
OS X	Download from http://git-scm.com/download/mac
Windows	Download from http://git-scm.com/download/win - Two programs will install: Git BASH and Git GUI. Use Git BASH! Although the GUI can perform almost all the same functions as BASH, it's great to get experience working from the command line. You can use unix/linux commands within BASH.
Linux	Ubuntu, Debian, and Mint users can run from their terminal: sudo apt-get install git. Fedora Users: sudo yum install git

(Global) Config Settings

There are some settings (such as your information, what editor you use, aliases, etc) on git that you'll definitely want to configure. Git has two files, ~/.gitconfig and ~/.gitignore located in your home directory. ~/.gitconfig stores settings that you can configure. '~/.gitignore` stores information about what files git should not keep track of. (Maybe you don't want git to track any files with the extension ".catvideo"). You can also make repo-specific .gitignore files (for example, if you don't want to track .class files in a repo).

You'll want to set your name, and email (attached to the commits you write):

$ git config --global user.name "John Doe"

$ git config --global user.email [email protected]

If you're unfamiliar with vim, change the default editor git uses:

• Mac: git config --global core.editor open
• Windows: git config --global core.editor notepad
• Linux: git config --global core.editor nano

If you want to make your git output be pretty and colorful, here's one way to do it: Open your git config:

• Mac: open ~/.gitconfig
• Windows: start ~/.gitconfig
• Linux: nano ~/.gitconfig
• Add the following lines:

[color]
	ui = true
[color "branch"]
	current = yellow reverse
	local = yellow
	remote = green
[color "diff"]
	meta = yellow bold
	frag = magenta bold
	old = red
	new = green

As you use git more and more, you might be interested in aliasing commands (generally by making them shorter so you can type less!) For more examples of ways to customize your git, you can look at an example gitconfig file under git_resources.

Git Basics

Basic Unix Commands

You'll be working within the terminal, or git BASH if you're on Windows, and so it's handy to know some basic unix commands for navigation. Type a command, and then press enter. -pwd tells you the directory (folder) you are currently in -ls shows the files in the current directory -cd [FOLDER_NAME] allows changes the current directory to FOLDER_NAME -cd .. changes back to the parent directory (the folder that the current directory is inside of)

On Windows you can also right-click on the folder you want to be in and click git Bash. This will open git BASH with the current directory already at the folder you want. On Macs, you can type cd and then drag the folder you want to the terminal window and it will fill in the pathname.

If this is confusing, ask for help! The command line can be daunting for beginners, but it will get easier with practice.

Getting a Git Repository

• Cloning an Existing Repository

  • Most of the time in this club and elsewhere you'll be using git to work on projects already on github. Use the following command to clone the project to your computer

  git clone https://github.com/dvcoders/intro-git.git

  -This creates a new folder with a name matching the repository (Git name for project) name that you cloned from -cd [REPOSITORY_NAME] to change your current directory to the newly created folder

• Initializing a repository in an existing directory

  • If you have a directory already on your computer that you want to start tracking with git, use git init to start tracking that folder with git.

  The .git directory allows git commands to be recognized within its parent directory (where you typed git init.)
  If you are NOT Inside a git repo, you will get an error when you try to type a git command.

  $ cd ~
  $ git status
  fatal: Not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git
  

Making and Recording Changes to the Repo

You tell git what to keep track of (does it care if you make changes to it or not?), and then git will tell you if any of your tracked files have been modified, whether they are staged for commit, and what branch you are on. The following command gives you all of that information:

git status

If you type this command in your newly cloned, or newly initialized folder, you'll see the following because you haven't made any changes yet:

$ git status
On branch master

Initial commit

nothing to commit

The first line means you are on the master branch (which is by default). The second line means you haven't commited any changes yet, and the third line means you haven't made any changes to the files or added any files yet.

So you want to start working on the files in your newly git-tracked folder. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Create a new "branch" and "check out" that branch for your work.

2. Make changes to the file(s) in your directory.

3. "add" those files so git tracks the changes.

4. Commit the changes you've made.

Detailed explanation of each step is below.

#####1. Create a new branch Git and github keep track of your work with branches. The topic is covered further in the "Other Topics" section below. For now, just know that before making changes on any of the files, you should create a new branch so you are not working directly under the branch "master" or "develop."

Create a new branch with:

git branch [branch name]

Usually you will name your branch something like "feature/something" or "bug-fix/something" to clearly identify what you are working on.

Checkout or "switch" to that newly created branch with:

git checkout [branch name]

To check that you are on the branch you want to be, run git status and the first line will tell you what branch you have checked out.

#####2. Make Changes If you create a new text file named "hello.txt", and then run git status, you'll see the following:

$ git status
On branch master

Initial commit

Untracked files:
	hello.txt

nothing added to commit but untracked files present

hello.txt is untracked by git. The last line means that git does not see any tracked changes, but it reminds you that there is an untracked file (hello.txt).

#####3. Add files You want to "add" hello.txt, so that it is tracked by git. Use:

git add hello.txt

If you want to add multiple files, just enter each filename separated by a space like so

git add file1 file2 file3 etc.

If you want to add all the files in the working directory, use the following:

git add -A

You should see the following:

$ git add hello.txt
On branch master

Initial commit

Changes to be committed:
	new file:   hello.txt

Now git knows there aren't any untracked files, and instead considers hello.txt as a tracked file, waiting to be committed. You can go back and make more changes to hello.txt or any other file. Just make sure to re-add hello.txt and the other files you have modified.

#####4. Commit Changes Once you have made all the changes you want and added those files, you are ready to "commit" your changes. Use the following command:

git commit -m "message explaining the changes"

If all goes well, something like this should show up:

$ git commit -m "Created hello.txt which contains a greeting"
[master (root-commit) f6f7407] Created hello.txt which contains a greeting
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
 create mode 100644 hello.txt

Now git is tracking a file called hello.txt, and you have one commit with your initial changes to it.

Congrats, you've made you're first commit. You probably want to publish those changes to Github, which is covered below.

Recap

If you type git status again, you'll notice we're kind of back to where we started. That's because we made and now git is tracking the changes between your most recent commit and now. This is the typical flow of using git:

1. git branch [branch name] and git checkout [branch name]"

2. Create file/make changes to file(s)

3. git add <file>

4. git commit -m "changes to <file(s)>"

5. Publish those changes (covered below)

Looking at Changes, Commits, and Undoing Things

If you want to see the commits you've made so far:

 $ git log
 Fri Jan 23 17:38:42 2015 -0800 025aabe (HEAD, master) Changed text of hello.txt  [Melanie Cebula]
 Fri Jan 23 17:35:13 2015 -0800 f6f7407 Created hello.txt which contains a greeting  [Melanie Cebula]

If you haven't yet committed your changes, you can look at what you changed by performing $ git diff. Go ahead and make some more changes to hello.txt. In my case, my evil twin sister stole my laptop and furiously typed some things. I want to know what she changed!!!

 $ git diff
 diff --git i/hello.txt w/hello.txt
 index 092bfb9..da5d515 100644
 --- i/hello.txt
 +++ w/hello.txt
 @@ -1 +1,3 @@
 -yo
 +Hahahahahaha I'm Melanie's evil twin Emily and I changed the text of this file!
 +Deal with it!!!!
 +-Emily

She deleted you (in red) and added a message (in green). How do we undo this? Since this is unstaged, we basically need to un-modify the modified changes.

Here's on way to do that (use with caution): $ git checkout -- hello.txt

However, if you want to undo something you've already committed (say your last commit):

Undo commit with git reset (use with caution): $ git reset --soft HEAD~1

Note: You can recover from undoing things (see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2510276/undoing-git-reset) but you should be careful in general, because it can get complicated.

Okay cool, so git can be used to keep track of modifications you make to the files that it tracks.

Pushing/Pulling Changes

So far, you've only dealt with a local git repo.

But nowadays, most people use Github to have a remote repository (the hosted on Github itself) in addition to their local repository.

This especially makes sense if you're working in teams. Each teammate has their own local git repo, but they all push to the same project repo on Github.

Lets go over the the technical terms so we all know what wer're talking about.

Pushing is the action of sending code to a remote repository (github in our case). Think of pushing as you shipping your packages ("commits") to their destination ("remote repository") in the mail ("internet").

If you push commits to a remote respository, the commits still stay on your computer, but the remote repository gets update with the chages you've made. Here's an example push to a remote repository:

$ git push origin feature/mongoose-orm

Counting objects: 13, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (11/11), done.
Writing objects: 100% (13/13), 1.36 KiB | 0 bytes/s, done.
Total 13 (delta 7), reused 0 (delta 0)
To [email protected]:dvcoders/dvcoders-backend.git
   905dd73..39b510b  feature/mongoose-orm -> feature/mongoose-orm

However, if the code on your computer is behind the code on the remote, you'll be rejected, and told that you need to "catch up" with git pull

$ git push origin master
To https://github.com/[username]/[name-of-project.git]
! [rejected]		master -> master (non-fast-forward)

Pulling is the opposite of pushing, instead of sending commits to the remote repository, we're getting code from the remote repository. We want to do this when other people working on the project have update our remote repository but we're not caught up yet. Think of pulling as getting a delivery of several packages ("commits") to your house ("local repository")

$ git pull

remote: Counting objects: 3, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
remote: Total 3 (delta 1), reused 3 (delta 1), pack-reused 0
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
From github.com:dvcoders/intro-git
   eaf2834..2e5a31a  master     -> origin/master
Updating eaf2834..2e5a31a
Fast-forward
 README.md | 34 +++++++++++++++++-----------------
 1 file changed, 17 insertions(+), 17 deletions(-)

However, sometimes something called a merge conflix can happen when trying to pull from a repository. A merge conflict happens when the code on your computer and the code on the remote repository have both been changd and git doesn't know which one you want to use (overwrite your local work or ignore the changes from the remote?)

As a result, we sometimes get this kind of error:

$ git pull
Auto-merging introductions.py
CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in README.md
Automatic merge failed; fix conflicts and then commit the result.

Git is telling us that there are multiple changes to the README.md file in this example. So in order to fix this issue, open the file listed in the "merge conflixt in ___________" and you should see conflict markers.

<<<<<<< HEAD
### Learning Git
git is awesome
=======
### Learning Git
git sucks
>>>>>>> [commit hash shows up here - 77976da35a...: README.md]

Git is telling us that these lines of code are different between our local computer and the remote we just tried to pull. In order to resolve this we ned to make a choice between which code we want to keep.

Everything from <<<<<<< HEAD to ======= is the code we have on our local machine.

Everything from ======= to >>>>>>> [commit hash...] is the code from our remote repo.

Simply delete the half you don't want and clean up all ======= or <<<<<<< markings.

Finally, to resolve this merge conflict we simple add and commit our changes!

$ git add -A
$ git commit -m "Resolved merge conflict"
# Optionally push the commit when appropriate

Other Topics:

Git Branching Summarized

(Image)

• A branch in Git is simply a lightweight movable pointer to your latest commit
• The default branch name in Git is master
• Each branch points to the latest commit made on that branch (each time you commit, it moves forward automatically)

Create a new branch with $ git branch <branchName>

• This creates a new pointer at the same commit you’re currently on.

Switch to branch with $ git checkout <branchName>

IMPORTANT: Switching branches CHANGES files in your working directory:

• If you switch to an older branch, your working directory will be reverted to look like it did the last time you committed on that branch
• If Git cannot do this cleanly, it will not let you switch at all.

Update a branch: All you have to do is checkout the branch you wish to merge into and then use the git merge command:

$ git checkout master
Switched to branch 'master'
$ git merge hot-fix

This code switches to branch master, and then merges the changes from branch hot-fix into master. Now master is up-to-date! You may need to correct a merge-conflict at this point, which is covered in the Pushing/Pulling section above.

List your local branches with git branch. An asterisk indicates the branch you are currently on. git branch -a will list all the local branches, and all the remote branches also. Remote branches are discussed below.

Note: When making changes on your projects, don't work under the branch "master" or "develop." It's better to work on another branch, which can be merged with the "develop" branch later on.

Remote Branches:

Remote branches are references (pointers) to the state of branches in your remote repositories.

• They take the form (remote)/(branch)
• Add a remote: $ git remote add REMOTE-NAME REMOTE-LOCATION For example: We add a remote called origin from the git repo git://git.whatever.com

$ git remote add origin git://git.whatever.com

Note: When you git clone a repository from github, git will automatically add the remote branches.

• List remotes: $ git remote -v
• Push to a remote: $ git push (remote) (branch)

A remote is simply a repository (folder being tracked by git) which lives somewhere other than you computer - github for example!

For example, if you are working on a branch called "feature/css-styling" and you want to push to github:

$ git push origin feature/css-styling

This tells git to push the commit(s) from the feature/css-styling branch to the "remote" url called "origin".

Git branching and remotes are confusing! The main thing to remember is that when you switch branches, your code changes! Use $ git log liberally if you forget which changes are on which branches.

Best Practices:

• USE GITHUB FLOW: Github Flow - Branch, Commit, PR, Discuss, Merge

• Write a descriptive commit message (50 characters or less)

• Break up commits into small changes.

• Keep master clean. Work on your own local branch and merge changes into master when you know they work.

• Add your SSH key to github so you don't have to type in your user/password every time:
  https://help.github.com/articles/generating-ssh-keys/

• git checkout [filename] to restore it to the state of the latest commit.

• git stash if you want to (temporarily) undo changes (git stash apply to re-apply it)

• **use a .gitignore file in each repo (ignore node_modules in javascript, .class files in java, pyc for python files, etc)

Learning Resources

• Got 15 Minutes? Learn Git - Awesome interactive command line which guides you through the commands we covered above.
• Git Cheatsheat - basically summarizes this entire guide in two pages for quick reference.
• Again, use Github Flow, it's "kind of" important.
• git-cheat CLI (Command Line Interface) - nifty command line tool where you can type git-cheat remote and it will give great summaries of what each command does.
• Have any other good learning resources? Make a pull request on this repo!

Parting Words:

Using Git takes practice! Make sure you have the add-commit-(pull)-push workflow down and you're halfway there!