Overview

Teaching: 10 min
Exercises: 0 min

Questions

• How can I remember all this stuff?

Objectives

• Reiterate the key points and look at a typical workflow

• How can you fix things when they go wrong

This page is really just a revision reminder and cheat-sheet. There is already a really good cheat-sheet available in the reference page.

How to start things off

git init
git remote add origin https://git.repository.org/user/project

You don’t have to use a “remote”, but it makes your repository much “safer” as you can git push it to the remote server. Even if you are not collaborating with others, this is a useful backup. Remember to create the empty repository on the server first!

or, if you want to copy an existing repository on a remote server:

git clone https://git.repository.org/user/project

Adding and editing files

Now, you can add files, and do:

git add filename.txt
git commit -m "Added a file called filename.txt"

A common mistake is to create a new file, and forget to add it to the repository. You can always check how things are going with:

git status

If you edit files, you can check the changes with

git diff

and then add and commit the changes too:

git add filename.txt
git commit -m "Edited a file called filename.txt"

Checking what you have done

You might want to look at the history:

git log

Note that there are lots of useful options to git log which you can explore.

Working with a remote

Once up and running with a remote server, you might collaborate with others. In which case, you should probably do this:

git pull

before doing anything else and

git push

when you have finished. A typical session would look like this:

git pull
# Edit files
git add filename.txt
git commit -m "Edited a file"
git push

Renaming, deleting, resetting

If you need to rename or delete files, try to use git mv and git rm instead of mv and rm. It makes it easier for git to follow.

Sometimes, things do get messed up. One useful command is:

git clean -fdx

which essentially cleans out any untracked files in your repository, and resets everything to the origin state. It is somewhat similar to:

rm -rf *
git clone https://git.repository.org/user/repo

i.e. delete everything locally, and copy again from the server (assuming you are using one). With the web interface, it is always possible to check the state of the server files before you do this.

Finally, use the git help command to get help, and you will also find tons of advice on git online with google and stackexchange.

Key Points

• It is hard to remember. Practice makes perfect.

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