If you are new to Git, it can be a bit much to get your head around. The content below assumes you are making use of http://bitbucket.org/ - a good alternative for small commercial teams, which is roughly as good as Github in a number of areas.
Git (Windows)
First, let's get a git client. If you are on windows, I recommend one called
msysgit. It gives you access to a start menu item, known as
Git Bash - this will look and feel a lot like a Linux terminal.
- http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/downloads/list
- Grab Git-1.8.1.2-preview20130201.exe, the "Official installer for windows"
Install, next, next, next, leave the line endings settings to whatever it defaulted to, next some more, SUCCESS!
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Bitbucket
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Much of the bitbucket UI for signup, create repository, etc is fairly self explanatory. Let's go ahead and
create a repository.
When you've done that successfully, you'll be confronted with a screen:
- I am starting from scratch
- I have code to import
Selecting "I have code to import" will give you a number of git commands as examples - to initialize a repository, to add your content, and to add a
remote.
There are two main protocols that git can make use of - https and ssh. The https URLs look like
https://you@bitbucket.org/you/repository_name.git
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... and for the moment, are the simplest to understand. If you already know about SSH and SSH keys, use the other protocol.
When you add a
remote, you give it a name - in this case,
origin. This is just a shortcut for the bitbucket server - you can choose any name you like; however there is a widespread convention to use
origin with the main repository.
For windows users,
- Start
- Git Bash - this is much like the windows command line (cmd), with a few different commands.
- Find your existing code - cd /c/path/on/your/hard/disk - note the direction of the slashes!
In Git Bash, instead of seeing a prompt like c:\>, the prompt ends in a $.
To get to your c:\ drive
$ cd /c/
To get to another path
$ cd /c/path/to/location
If you aren't sure, you can hit the TAB key repeatedly to autocomplete your filenames or show you a list of suggestions.
Once you have located the right directory with your existing code, we want to initialize a repository
$ git init
Next, add a
remote called
origin pointing at bitbucket.
$ git remote add origin https://you@bitbucket.org/you/repository_name.git
Tell Git to monitor the files - this is like an svn add.
$ git add .
To see the affect of git add, do
$ git status
# On branch master
#
# Initial commit
#
# Changes to be committed:
# (use "git rm --cached ..." to unstage)
#
# new file: A.xml
# new file: B.java
# new file: C.wsdl
# new file: D.wsdl
#
you@yourcomputer ~/path/to/local/code (master)
You can see the code is now being tracked. It wants you to commit.
So, perform your first commit:
$ git commit -m "Importing my code" -a
[master (root-commit) 0bba05d] Importing my code
4 files changed, 127 insertions(+)
All done, right? Not quite. You've made a
commit, but this is only local to your repository. Think of it as the save command in a word document - it doesn't publish anything, but it lets you undo/redo changes.
From here you can do as many changes and as many commits as you want.
$ git commit -m "fix typo"
$ git commit -m "remove swearwords"
Also, you probably saw some warnings like:
*** Please tell me who you are.
Run
git config --global user.email "you@example.com"
git config --global user.name "Your Name"
It's worth doing this, as each commit is attributed to a user - you'll only have to do this once. Don't worry too much: your commit will still have succeeded.
Anyway, you can check the status again with
$ git status
# On branch master
nothing to commit, working directory clean
It should tell you if there are any untracked files (git add them), or uncommmited files (git commit them) - but ideally, it should look like the above.
To
publish your changes, you need to
push them. For simplicity, we'll also set a default destination (via -u) - the
origin remote repository;
master branch.
$ git push -u origin master
Password for 'https://you@bitbucket.org':
Counting objects: 6, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (6/6), done.
Writing objects: 100% (6/6), 3.81 KiB, done.
Total 6 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)
remote: bb/acl: you is allowed. accepted payload.
To https://you@bitbucket.org/you/repository_name.git
* [new branch] master -> master
Branch master set up to track remote branch master from origin.
you@yourcomputer ~/path/to/code (master)
... and check bitbucket.org - your code should be published!
Great - but what just happened? If you look at the diagram, we've done everything on the left hand side - have a
local, have a
remote, and
pushed changes. It's now possible for someone else to
clone your repo, or
fork it, and
pull changes.
You can see that there can be
many repositories - sometimes teams will maintain a 'core' repo, and people on the outside take a 'fork'.
