Versioning a text file.

Git versions any kind of file. However, text based files (text, computer code, xml, html etc) work especially well with Git. This is because Git keeps track of the line by line differences as well. In this unit we will use the sample text files to learn the basic, most comman and probably most useful commands in Git.

To get started make a new directory called “learning_git” and navigate to it.


> mkdir learning_git
> cd learning_git

Then download the Supporting file Example file for this unit” into this directory.

Now we are going to make our first Git repository.


> git init
# Initialized empty Git repository in <your location>
> git add -A
> git commit -m "initial commit"
[master (root-commit) 6a074a6] initial commit
#  1 file changed, 73 insertions(+)
#  create mode 100644 example.txt
>

The last three steps did a few things and are a typical way of creating a new repository. First we initialized the repository. If you type ls -al into your terminal you will see it created a .git directory. The second two steps almost always go together. We first stage our changes, with git add, the -A tells git to stage all changes. The commit command creates the new version. You are required to provide a commit message with every commit with the -m option. It’s usually a brief, description of the changes made in that commit.

Now makes some edits to your text file using any text editor. Try adding lines and workds, deleting things. Then check your status.


> git status

# You should see something like this

# On branch master
# Changes not staged for commit:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#   (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)

# 	modified:   first_example_file.txt

# no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

The status command can be useful if you lost track of where you are at and want to see all the changes you made. As you can see it gives you some hints as to what to do next as well. Also notice there are other options than -A for the add command. You can specify a file or directory as well. The git add . for instance will add all the files in your current directory including any subdirectories and their contents.

You can also see the changes you’ve made.


> git diff
  # diff --git a/first_example_file.txt b/first_example_file.txt
  # index 4030ec8..5cae1d0 100644
  # --- a/first_example_file.txt
  # +++ b/first_example_file.txt
  # @@ -27,4 +27,6 @@ paleo actually farm-to-table aute gastropub pork belly cred in minim yr.
  #  Oh. You need a little dummy text for your mockup? How quaint.
  #  
  #  
  # -Here are some edits in the new branch.
  # \ No newline at end of file
  # +Here are some edits in the new branch.
  # +
  # +These are some edits.
  # \ No newline at end of file

> git add -A
> git commit -m "trying out comitting changes."

Believe it or not, this is most of what you do with Git. The rest of the tutorial is of course important and much of it necessary, but git add and git commit are probably the most often used commands. We can do a little more with commits.

Try It Out

Practice editing your file, editing, changing and adding text. Also try adding additional text files or files of other types. Use the status, diff, add and commit commands.

Supporting Files