Git for beginners: The definitive practical guide
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by Adam Davis
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Published on 2008-11-24T23:50:29Z
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2010/03/15
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Ok, after seeing this post by PJ Hyett, I have decided to skip to the end and go with git.
So what I need is a beginners practical guide to git. "Beginner" being defined as someone who knows how to handle their compiler, understands to some level what a makefile is, and has touched source control without understanding it very well.
"Practical" being defined as this person doesn't want to get into great detail regarding what git is doing in the background, and doesn't even care (or know) that it's distributed. Your answers might hint at the possibilities, but try to aim for the beginner that wants to keep a 'main' repository on a 'server' which is backed up and secure, and treat their local repository as merely a 'client' resource.
Procedural note: PLEASE pick one and only one of the below topics and answer it clearly and concisely in any given answer. Don't try to jam a bunch of information into one answer. Don't just link to other resources - cut and paste with attribution if copyright allows, otherwise learn it and explain it in your own words (ie, don't make people leave this page to learn a task). Please comment on, or edit, an already existing answer unless your explanation is very different and you think the community is better served with a different explanation rather than altering the existing explanation.
So:
Installation/Setup
- How to install git
- How do you set up git? Try to cover linux, windows, mac, think 'client/server' mindset.
- How do you create a new project/repository?
- How do you configure it to ignore files (.obj, .user, etc) that are not really part of the codebase?
Working with the code
- How do you get the latest code?
- How do you check out code?
- How do you commit changes?
- How do you see what's uncommitted, or the status of your current codebase?
- How do you destroy unwanted commits?
- How do you compare two revisions of a file, or your current file and a previous revision?
- How do you see the history of revisions to a file?
- How do you handle binary files (visio docs, for instance, or compiler environments)?
- How do you merge files changed at the "same time"?
- How do you undo (revert or reset) a commit?
Tagging, branching, releases, baselines
- How do you 'mark' 'tag' or 'release' a particular set of revisions for a particular set of files so you can always pull that one later?
- How do you pull a particular 'release'?
- How do you branch?
- How do you merge branches?
- How do you resolve conflicts and complete the merge?
- How do you merge parts of one branch into another branch?
- What is rebasing?
- How do I track remote branches?
- How can I create a branch on a remote repository?
Other
- Describe and link to a good gui, IDE plugin, etc that makes git a non-command line resource, but please list its limitations as well as its good.
- Any other common tasks a beginner should know?
- How do I work effectively with a subversion repository set as my source control source?
Other git beginner's references
- git guide
- git book
- git magic
- gitcasts
- github guides
- git tutorial
- Progit - book by Scott Chacon
- Git - SVN Crash Course
Delving into git
I will go through the entries from time to time and 'tidy' them up so they have a consistent look/feel and it's easy to scan the list - feel free to follow a simple "header - brief explanation - list of instructions - gotchas and extra info" template. I'll also link to the entries from the bullet list above so it's easy to find them later.
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