Git for beginners The definitive practical guide

Question

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 beginner s 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   So   Installation Setup   How to install Git How do you set up Git   Try to cover Linux  Windows  Mac  think  client server  mindset    Setup GIT Server with Msysgit on Windows  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  How do I delete a branch on a remote repository  Git workflow examples   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    msysgit - Cross platform  included with Git gitk - Cross platform history viewer  included with Git gitnub - Mac OS X gitx - Mac OS X history viewer smartgit - Cross platform  commercial  beta tig - console GUI for Linux qgit - GUI for Windows  Linux Git Extensions - package for Windows  includes friendly GUI  Any other common tasks a beginner should know    Git Status tells you what you just did  what branch you have  and other useful information  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 Git from the bottom up Git ready gitref org Git visual cheatsheet   Delving into Git   Understanding Git conceptually Git for computer scientists  and another version     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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How do I delete a branch on a remote repository?

Perform a push in your remote using : before the name of the branch

git push origin :mybranchname

being origin the name of your remote and mybranchname the name of the branch about to be deleted

http://help.github.com/remotes/

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How to configure it to ignore files   The ability to have git ignore files you don t wish it to track is very useful    To ignore a file or set of files you supply a pattern   The pattern syntax for git is fairly simple  but powerful  It is applicable to all three of the different files I will mention bellow    A blank line ignores no files  it is generally used as a separator  Lines staring with   serve as comments   The   prefix is optional and will negate the pattern  Any negated pattern that matches will override lower precedence patterns   Supports advanced expressions and wild cards   Ex  The pattern     oa   will ignore all files in the repository ending in  o or  a  object and archive files   If a pattern has a directory ending with a slash git will only match this directory and paths underneath it  This excludes regular files and symbolic links from the match   A leading slash will match all files in that path name    Ex  The pattern    c will match the file foo c but not bar awesome c    Great Example from the gitignore 5  man page     git status         Untracked files                Documentation foo html         Documentation gitignore html         file o         lib a         src internal o         cat  git info exclude     ignore objects and archives  anywhere in the tree       oa    cat Documentation  gitignore   ignore generated html files    html   except foo html which is maintained by hand  foo html   git status         Untracked files                Documentation foo html           Generally there are three different ways to ignore untracked files    1  Ignore for all users of the repository   Add a file named  gitignore to the root of your working copy   Edit  gitignore to match your preferences for which files should shouldn t be ignored   git add  gitignore    and commit when you re done     2  Ignore for only your copy of the repository   Add Edit the file  GIT DIR info exclude in your working copy  with your preferred patterns    Ex  My working copy is   src project1 so I would edit   src project1  git info exclude  You re done   3  Ignore in all situations  on your system    Global ignore patterns for your system can go in a file named what ever you wish    Mine personally is called    gitglobalignore   I can then let git know of this file by editing my    gitconfig file with the following line   core excludesfile      gitglobalignore   You re done   I find the gitignore man page to be the best resource for more information

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How do you  tag  a particular set of revisions  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   Using the git tag command   To simply  tag  the current revision  you would just run    git tag -a thetagname git tag -a 0 1 git tag -a 2 6 1-rc1 -m  Released on 01 02 03    To list the current tags  simply run git tag with no arguments  or -l  lower case L      git tag -a thetagname   and enter a message  or use -m  My tag annotation    git tag -l thetagname   To delete a tag  you use the -d flag     git tag -d thetagname  Deleted tag  thetagname    git tag  no output    To tag a specific  previous  commit  you simply do    git tag  tag name   revision SHA1 hash    For example   git tag 1 1 1 81b15a68c6c3e71f72e766931df4e6499990385b     Note  by default  git creates a  lightweight  tag  basically a reference to a specific revision   The  right  way is to use the -a flag  This will launch your editor asking for a tag message  identical to asking for a commit message  you can also use the -m flag to supply the tag message on the command line   Using an annotated tag creates an object with its own ID  date  tagger  author   and optionally a GPG signature  using the -s tag    For further information on this  see this post  git tag mytagwithmsg -a -m  This is a tag  with message    And to list the tags with annotations  use the -n1 flag to show 1 line of each tag message  -n245 to show the first 245 lines of each annotation  and so on      git tag -l -n1 mytagwithmsg    This is a tag  with message   For more information  see the git-tag 1  Manual Page

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How do you branch   The default branch in a git repository is called master      To create a new branch use    git branch  lt branch-name gt    To see a list of all branches in the current repository type  git branch   If you want to switch to another branch you can use  git checkout  lt branch-name gt    To create a new branch and switch to it in one step  git checkout -b  lt branch-name gt    To delete a branch  use  git branch -d  lt branch-name gt    To create a branch with the changes from the current branch  do  git stash git stash branch  lt branch-name gt

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How do you create a new project repository  A git repository is simply a directory containing a special  git directory  This is different from  quot centralised quot  version-control systems  like subversion   where a  quot repository quot  is hosted on a remote server  which you checkout into a  quot working copy quot  directory  With git  your working copy is the repository  Simply run git init in the directory which contains the files you wish to track  For example  cd   code project001  git init  This creates a  git  hidden  folder in the current directory  To make a new project  run git init with an additional argument  the name of the directory to be created   git init project002   This is equivalent to  mkdir project002  amp  amp  cd project002  amp  amp  git init   To check if the current current path is within a git repository  simply run git status - if it s not a repository  it will report  quot fatal  Not a git repository quot  You could also list the  git directory  and check it contains files directories similar to the following    ls  git HEAD         config       hooks        objects  branches     description  info         refs    If for whatever reason you wish to  quot de-git quot  a repository  you wish to stop using git to track that project   Simply remove the  git directory at the base level of the repository  cd   code project001  rm -rf  git   Caution  This will destroy all revision history  all your tags  everything git has done  It will not touch the  quot current quot  files  the files you can currently see   but previous changes  deleted files and so on will be unrecoverable

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Git Reset  Say you make a pull  merge it into your code  and decide you don t like it  Use git-log  or tig  and find the hash of wherever you want to go back to  probably your last commit before the pull merge  copy the hash  and do     Revert to a previous commit by hash  git-reset --hard  lt hash gt    Instead of the hash  you can use HEAD  as a shortcut for the previous commit     Revert to previous commit  git-reset --hard HEAD

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What is rebasing  Rebase explanation taken from the book Pragmatic Guide to Git - Travis Swicegood  Chapter III 16   Rewriting History by Rebasing Rebasing commits is the one concept in Git that has no counterpart inside the traditional version control world  Using git rebase  you can rewrite the history of a repository in a variety of ways  It is one of the most powerful commands in Git  which makes it one of the most dangerous  rebase takes a series of commits  normally a branch  and replays them on top of another commit  normally the last commit in another branch   The parent commit changes so all the commit IDs are recalculated  This can cause problems for other developers who have your code because the IDs don   t match up  There   s a simple rule of thumb with git rebase  use it as much as you want on local commits  Once you   ve shared changes with another developer  the headache is generally not worth the trouble

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Resource  Definitely check out Scott Chacon s Gitcasts  especially the Railsconf talk   Github is awesome and also has some helpful guides

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GUIs for git    Git GUI  Included with git  mdash  Run git gui from the command line  and the Windows msysgit installer adds it to the Start menu   Git GUI can do a majority of what you d need to do with git  Including stage changes  configure git and repositories  push changes  create checkout delete branches  merge  and many other things   One of my favourite features is the  stage line  and  stage hunk  shortcuts in the right-click menu  which lets you commit specific parts of a file  You can achieve the same via git add -i  but I find it easier to use   It isn t the prettiest application  but it works on almost all platforms  being based upon Tcl Tk   Screenshots   a screencast    GitK  Also included with git  It is a git history viewer  and lets you visualise a repository s history  including branches  when they are created  and merged   You can view and search commits   Goes together nicely with git-gui     Gitnub  Mac OS X application  Mainly an equivalent of git log  but has some integration with github  like the  Network view     Looks pretty  and fits with Mac OS X  You can search repositories  The biggest critisism of Gitnub is that it shows history in a linear fashion  a single branch at a time  - it doesn t visualise branching and merging  which can be important with git  although this is a planned improvement   Download links  change log and screenshots   git repository    GitX  Intends to be a  gitk clone for OS X    It can visualise non-linear branching history  perform commits  view and search commits  and it has some other nice features like being able to  Quicklook  any file in any revision  press space in the file-list view   export any file  via drag and drop    It is far better integrated into OS X than git-gui gitk  and is fast and stable even with exceptionally large repositories   The original git repository pieter has not updated recently  over a year at time of writing   A more actively maintained branch is available at brotherbard gitx - it adds  sidebar  fetch  pull  push  add remote  merge  cherry-pick  rebase  clone  clone to   Download   Screenshots   git repository   brotherbard fork   laullon fork    SmartGit  From the homepage       SmartGit is a front-end for the   distributed version control system Git   and runs on Windows  Mac OS X and   Linux  SmartGit is intended for   developers who prefer a graphical user   interface over a command line client    to be even more productive with Git       the most powerful DVCS today    You can download it from their website   Download    TortoiseGit  TortoiseSVN Git version for Windows users       It is porting TortoiseSVN to TortoiseGit The latest release 1 2 1 0 This release can complete regular task  such commit  show log  diff two version  create branch and tag  Create patch and so on  See ReleaseNotes for detail  Welcome to contribute this project    Download    QGit     QGit is a git GUI viewer built on   Qt C          With qgit you will be able to browse   revisions history  view patch content   and changed files  graphically   following different development   branches    Download    gitg     gitg is a git repository viewer   targeting gtk  GNOME  One of its main   objectives is to provide a more   unified user experience for git   frontends across multiple desktops  It   does this not be writing a   cross-platform application  but by   close collaboration with similar   clients for other operating systems    like GitX for OS X     Features   Browse revision history  Handle large repositories  loads linux repository  17000  revisions  under 1 second   Commit changes  Stage unstage individual hunks  Revert changes  Show colorized diff of changes in revisions  Browse tree for a given revision  Export parts of the tree of a given revision  Supply any refspec which a command such as  git log  can understand to built the history  Show and switch between branches in the history view    Download  releases or source    Gitbox     Gitbox is a Mac OS X graphical   interface for Git version control   system  In a single window you see   branches  history and working   directory status       Everyday operations are easy  stage   and unstage changes with a checkbox    Commit  pull  merge and push with a   single click  Double-click a change to   show a diff with FileMerge app    Download    Gity  The Gity website doesn t have much information  but from the screenshots on there it appears to be a feature rich open source OS X git gui    Download or source    Meld     Meld is a visual diff and merge tool    You can compare two or three files and   edit them in place  diffs update   dynamically   You can compare two or   three folders and launch file   comparisons  You can browse and view a   working copy from popular version   control systems such such as CVS    Subversion  Bazaar-ng and Mercurial    and Git     Downloads    Katana  A Git GUIfor OSX by Steve Dekorte      At a glance  see which remote branches   have changes to pull and local repos    have changes to push  The git ops of    add  commit  push  pull  tag and reset   are supported as well as visual diffs   and visual browsing of project hieracy    that highlights local changes and additions    Free for 1 repository   25 for more   Download    Sprout  formerly GitMac   Focuses on making Git easy to use  Features a native Cocoa  mac-like  UI  fast repository browsing  cloning  push pull  branching merging  visual diff  remote branches  easy access to the Terminal  and more   By making the most commonly used Git actions intuitive and easy to perform  Sprout  formerly GitMac  makes Git user-friendly  Compatible with most Git workflows  Sprout is great for designers and developers  team collaboration and advanced and novice users alike   Download   Website    Tower  A feature-rich Git GUI for Mac OSX  30-day free trial   59USD for a single-user license   Download   Website    EGit     EGit is an Eclipse Team provider for the Git version control system    Git is a distributed SCM  which means every developer has a full copy   of all history of every revision of the code  making queries against   the history very fast and versatile       The EGit project is implementing Eclipse tooling on top of the JGit   Java implementation of Git    Download   Website    Git Extensions  Open Source for Windows - installs everything you need to work with Git in a single package  easy to use      Git Extensions is a toolkit to make working with Git on Windows more intuitive  The shell extension will intergrate in Windows Explorer and presents a context menu on files and directories  There is also a Visual Studio plugin to use git from Visual Studio     Download  Big thanks to dbr for elaborating on the git gui stuff     SourceTree  SourceTree is a free Mac client for Git  Mercurial and SVN  Built by Atlassian  the folks behind BitBucket  it seems to work equally well with any VC system  which allows you to master a single tool for use with all of your projects  however they re version-controlled  Feature-packed  and FREE      Expert-Ready  amp  Feature-packed for both novice and advanced users       Review outgoing and incoming changesets     Cherry-pick between branches     Patch handling  rebase  stash   shelve and much more     Download   Website

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Commit Changes  Once you ve edited a file  you need to commit your changes to git   When you execute this command it will ask for a commit message - which is just a simple bit of text that tells everyone what you ve changed     git commit source main c   Will commit the file main c in the directory   source     git commit -a   the -a flag pulls in all modified files   will commit all changed files  but not new files  those need to be added to the index with git-add   If you want to commit only certain files then you will need to stage them first with git-add and then commit without the -a flag   Commiting only changes your local repository though not the remote repositories  If you want to send the commits to the remote repository then you will need to do a push     git push  lt remote gt   lt branch gt    push new commits to the  lt branch gt  on the  lt remote gt  repository   For someone coming from CVS or SVN this is a change since the commit to the central repository now requires two steps

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Why yet another howto  There are really good ones on the net  like the git guide which is perfect to begin  It has good links including the git book to which one can contribute  hosted on git hub  and which is perfect for this collective task   On stackoverflow  I would really prefer to see your favorite tricks    Mine  which I discovered only lately  is git stash  explained here  which enables you to save your current job and go to another branch  EDIT  as the previous post  if you really prefer stackoverlow format with posts as a wiki I will delete this answer

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How do you set up a shared team repository   How to set up a normal repository is described here -- but how do you set up a team repository that everybody can pull and push from and to   Using a shared NFS file system  Assuming your team already has for instance a shared group membership that can be used   mkdir  your share folder project git cd  your share folder project git newgrp yourteamgroup   if necessary git init --bare --shared   To start using this repository the easiest thing to do is start from a local repository you already have been using   cd your local workspace project git remote add origin  your share folder project git git push origin master   Others can now clone this and start working   cd your local workspace git clone  your share folder project git   Using SSH  Set up a user account on the target server   Whether you use an account with no password  an account with a password  or use authorized keys really depend on your required level of security   Take a look at Configuring Git over SSH for some more information   If all developers use the same account for accessing this shared repository  you do not need to use the --shared option as above   After initing the repository in the same way as above  you do the initial push like this   cd your local workspace project git remote add origin user server  path to project git git push origin master   See the similarity with the above   The only thing that might happen in addition is SSH asking for a password if the account has a password   If you get this prompt on an account without a password the SSH server probably has disabled PermitEmptyPasswords   Cloning now looks like this   cd your local workspace git clone user server  path to project git

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How to install Git  On Windows   Install msysgit  There are several downloads    Git  Use this unless you specifically need one of the other options below  PortableGit  Use this if you want to run Git on a PC without installing on that PC  e g  running Git from a USB drive  msysGit  Use this if you want to develop Git itself   If you just want to use Git for your source code  but don t want to edit Git s source code  you don t need this    This also installs a Cygwin bash shell  so you can use the git in a nicer shell  than cmd exe   and also includes git-gui  accessible via git gui command  or the Start  gt  All Programs  gt  Git menu   Mac OS X  Use the git-osx-installer  or you can also install from source  Via a package manager  Install git using your native package manager  For example  on Debian  or Ubuntu    apt-get install git-core   Or on Mac OS X  via MacPorts   sudo port install git-core bash completion doc      or fink   fink install git      or Homebrew   brew install git   On Red Hat based distributions  such as Fedora   yum install git   In Cygwin the Git package can be found under the  devel  section  From source  Mac OS X Linux BSD etc    In Mac OS X  if you have the Developer Tools installed  you can compile Git from source very easily  Download the latest version of Git as a  tar bz or  tar gz from http   git-scm com   and extract it  double click in Finder   On Linux BSD etc  it should be much the same  For example  in Debian  and Ubuntu   you need to install the build-essential package via apt   Then in a Terminal  cd to where you extracted the files  Running cd   Downloads git   should work   and then run      configure  amp  amp  make  amp  amp  sudo make install   This will install Git into the default place   usr local - so git will be in  usr local bin git   It will prompt you to enter your password  for sudo   this is so it can write to the  usr local  directory  which can only be accessed by the  root  user so sudo is required   If you with to install it somewhere separate  so Git s files aren t mixed in with other tools   use --prefix with the configure command     configure --prefix  usr local gitpath make sudo make install   This will install the git binary into  usr local bin gitpath bin git - so you don t have to type that every time you  you should add into your  PATH by adding the following line into your    profile   export PATH    PATH   usr local bin gitpath bin     If you do not have sudo access  you can use --prefix  Users myusername bin and install into your home directory  Remember to add   bin  to  PATH  The script x-git-update-to-latest-version automates a lot of this      This script updates my local clone of the git repo  localy at   work track git   and then configures  installs  at  usr local git-git describe  and updates the  usr local git symlink       This way  I can have  usr local git bin in my PATH and I m always using the latest version       The latest version of this script also installs the man pages  You need to tweak your MANPATH to include the  usr local git share man directory

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How do you  tag  a particular set of revisions  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   Using the git tag command   To simply  tag  the current revision  you would just run    git tag -a thetagname git tag -a 0 1 git tag -a 2 6 1-rc1 -m  Released on 01 02 03    To list the current tags  simply run git tag with no arguments  or -l  lower case L      git tag -a thetagname   and enter a message  or use -m  My tag annotation    git tag -l thetagname   To delete a tag  you use the -d flag     git tag -d thetagname  Deleted tag  thetagname    git tag  no output    To tag a specific  previous  commit  you simply do    git tag  tag name   revision SHA1 hash    For example   git tag 1 1 1 81b15a68c6c3e71f72e766931df4e6499990385b     Note  by default  git creates a  lightweight  tag  basically a reference to a specific revision   The  right  way is to use the -a flag  This will launch your editor asking for a tag message  identical to asking for a commit message  you can also use the -m flag to supply the tag message on the command line   Using an annotated tag creates an object with its own ID  date  tagger  author   and optionally a GPG signature  using the -s tag    For further information on this  see this post  git tag mytagwithmsg -a -m  This is a tag  with message    And to list the tags with annotations  use the -n1 flag to show 1 line of each tag message  -n245 to show the first 245 lines of each annotation  and so on      git tag -l -n1 mytagwithmsg    This is a tag  with message   For more information  see the git-tag 1  Manual Page

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Getting the latest Code    git pull  lt remote gt   lt branch gt    fetches the code and merges it into                                 your working directory   git fetch  lt remote gt   lt branch gt    fetches the code but does not merge                                 it into your working directory    git pull --tag  lt remote gt   lt branch gt    same as above but fetch tags as well   git fetch --tag  lt remote gt   lt branch gt    you get the idea   That pretty much covers every case for getting the latest copy of the code from the remote repository

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Well  despite the fact that you asked that we not  simply  link to other resources  it s pretty foolish when there already exists a community grown  and growing  resource that s really quite good  the Git Community Book   Seriously  this 20  questions in a question is going to be anything but concise and consistent   The Git Community Book is available as both HTML and PDF and answers many of your questions with clear  well formatted and peer reviewed answers and in a format that allows you to jump straight to your problem at hand   Alas  if my post really upsets you then I ll delete it   Just say so

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How do you  tag  a particular set of revisions  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   Using the git tag command   To simply  tag  the current revision  you would just run    git tag -a thetagname git tag -a 0 1 git tag -a 2 6 1-rc1 -m  Released on 01 02 03    To list the current tags  simply run git tag with no arguments  or -l  lower case L      git tag -a thetagname   and enter a message  or use -m  My tag annotation    git tag -l thetagname   To delete a tag  you use the -d flag     git tag -d thetagname  Deleted tag  thetagname    git tag  no output    To tag a specific  previous  commit  you simply do    git tag  tag name   revision SHA1 hash    For example   git tag 1 1 1 81b15a68c6c3e71f72e766931df4e6499990385b     Note  by default  git creates a  lightweight  tag  basically a reference to a specific revision   The  right  way is to use the -a flag  This will launch your editor asking for a tag message  identical to asking for a commit message  you can also use the -m flag to supply the tag message on the command line   Using an annotated tag creates an object with its own ID  date  tagger  author   and optionally a GPG signature  using the -s tag    For further information on this  see this post  git tag mytagwithmsg -a -m  This is a tag  with message    And to list the tags with annotations  use the -n1 flag to show 1 line of each tag message  -n245 to show the first 245 lines of each annotation  and so on      git tag -l -n1 mytagwithmsg    This is a tag  with message   For more information  see the git-tag 1  Manual Page

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Getting the latest Code    git pull  lt remote gt   lt branch gt    fetches the code and merges it into                                 your working directory   git fetch  lt remote gt   lt branch gt    fetches the code but does not merge                                 it into your working directory    git pull --tag  lt remote gt   lt branch gt    same as above but fetch tags as well   git fetch --tag  lt remote gt   lt branch gt    you get the idea   That pretty much covers every case for getting the latest copy of the code from the remote repository

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Checking Out Code  First go to an empty dir  use  git init  to make it a repository  then clone the remote repo into your own   git clone user host com  dir to repo   Wherever you initially clone from is where  git pull  will pull from by default

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Here s a copy of PJ Hyett s post  as it is not available anymore      Git Isn t Hard      Nov 23  2008      When we tell people why they should   use Git over Subversion  the go-to   line is     Git does Subversion better   than Subversion  but it does a lot   more than that          The    lot more    is comprised of a bunch   of stuff that makes Git really shine    but it can be pretty overwhelming for   those coming from other SCM   s like   Subversion       That said  there   s nothing stopping   you from using Git just like you use   Subversion while you   re making the   transition       Assuming you   ve installed the   necessary software and have a remote   repository somewhere  this is how you   would grab the code and push your   changes back with Subversion         svn checkout svn   foo googlecode com svn trunk foo     make your changes     svn commit -m  my first commit       And how would you do it in Git         git clone git github com pjhyett foo git     make your changes     git commit -a -m  my first commit      git push      One more command to make it happen in   Git  That extra command has large   implications  but for the purposes of   this post  that   s all we   re talking   about  one extra command       See  it really isn   t that hard       Update  I   d be remiss to not also mention that the equivalent of   updating your local copy in Subversion   compared to Git is svn update and   git pull  respectively  Only one   command in both cases

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One more item I really think should be in this list  probably very useful for beginners  Don t Panic What if I ve done some commits and then I did something scary  like maybe a rebase  and now something   or even everything   seems to be lost    Rebase seems to be the one that gets most people the first time  so I m concentrating on it   While git rebase --abort helps a lot  sometimes you ll find that you botched an edit during an interactive rebase  for instance  and let the rebase finish and now you want to get your old stuff back   And then there are things like filter-branch     One key git principle is that it never actually deletes anything you ve committed     quot What  never  quot    quot No  never  quot    quot What  never  quot    quot Well  hardly ever  quot    If you have not run git gc  it s still in there   It may take some digging around to find your previous work  but if you did some successful git commits earlier  then  for instance  even your apparently-wrecked series of commits from a tragic rebase error are still in there  normally for at least a month  technically  until the  quot reflogs quot  expire   It s important to keep in mind that each branch name labels   or points to   a  quot commit-ID quot    These are the the funny numbers like 7cc5272   Many of the things you do  like adding a new commit to a branch  make the branch name point to a new  different commit-ID   Each commit-ID has a link pointing back to some previous commit-ID s   and this is what actually makes up a  quot branch quot  full of commits  The rebase entry talks about  quot rewriting history  quot  and commands like git filter-branch also  quot rewrite history  quot  but they do it not by destroying the previous history  but rather by adding new history   Once the new history is in place  git will  quot move the labels around quot  so that it looks like history has changed   If you are on your fix-nasty-bug branch and do a git rebase and manage to wreck things  the label fix-nasty-bug now refers to the wreckage  but the original versions are still there   Rebase in particular makes a temporary  non-moving  not-a-branch  label spelled ORIG HEAD that lets you find them   The filter-branch command saves all the original names as well   In some cases  there may be no obvious name  but the commits can always be found   If necessary  find yourself a  quot git guru quot  and explain what you did that led to the wreckage   The command git reflog show can also help with finding commit-IDs   If you have found what you think is some or all of your previous work  try  git log  lt commit-ID gt      ORIG HEAD after a bad rebase  for instance git show  lt commit-ID gt     or some long SHA1 value you can still see in a window  If it looks right or useful  put a name to it  git branch recover-my-stuff ORIG HEAD  and it s all back again   In fact  now both your bad rebase and your original work are in your git repo  quot forever quot   or at least  until you delete the branch names and let a few months go by  and then they get garbage-collected    You can put as many names to as many recovered commits as you like    Branch names are virtually free  except for cluttering up your git branch output  and of course they also keep commits from being garbage-collected   You can also  or instead  put tags on specific commit-IDs  if you prefer those

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How can I create a branch on a remote repository   Assuming that you have cloned your remote repository from some single remote repository     create a new branch locally git branch name of branch git checkout name of branch   edit add remove files              Commit your changes locally git add fileName git commit -m Message   push changes and new branch to remote repository  git push origin name of branch name of branch

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Why yet another howto  There are really good ones on the net  like the git guide which is perfect to begin  It has good links including the git book to which one can contribute  hosted on git hub  and which is perfect for this collective task   On stackoverflow  I would really prefer to see your favorite tricks    Mine  which I discovered only lately  is git stash  explained here  which enables you to save your current job and go to another branch  EDIT  as the previous post  if you really prefer stackoverlow format with posts as a wiki I will delete this answer

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The Pro Git free book is definitely my favorite  especially for beginners

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Seriously add the link featured in Tim s answer in the Stack Overflow post Setup Git Server with Msysgit on Windows   It flawlessly told me how to setup Git on Windows with msysgit  and is an incredibly detailed article

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I found this post to be very useful to get me started  I still need to read the book and other resources but the post was helpful in  as the title says   understanding git conceptually   I also recommend taking the Git  amp  GitHub course offered at RubyLearning

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One more item I really think should be in this list  probably very useful for beginners  Don t Panic What if I ve done some commits and then I did something scary  like maybe a rebase  and now something   or even everything   seems to be lost    Rebase seems to be the one that gets most people the first time  so I m concentrating on it   While git rebase --abort helps a lot  sometimes you ll find that you botched an edit during an interactive rebase  for instance  and let the rebase finish and now you want to get your old stuff back   And then there are things like filter-branch     One key git principle is that it never actually deletes anything you ve committed     quot What  never  quot    quot No  never  quot    quot What  never  quot    quot Well  hardly ever  quot    If you have not run git gc  it s still in there   It may take some digging around to find your previous work  but if you did some successful git commits earlier  then  for instance  even your apparently-wrecked series of commits from a tragic rebase error are still in there  normally for at least a month  technically  until the  quot reflogs quot  expire   It s important to keep in mind that each branch name labels   or points to   a  quot commit-ID quot    These are the the funny numbers like 7cc5272   Many of the things you do  like adding a new commit to a branch  make the branch name point to a new  different commit-ID   Each commit-ID has a link pointing back to some previous commit-ID s   and this is what actually makes up a  quot branch quot  full of commits  The rebase entry talks about  quot rewriting history  quot  and commands like git filter-branch also  quot rewrite history  quot  but they do it not by destroying the previous history  but rather by adding new history   Once the new history is in place  git will  quot move the labels around quot  so that it looks like history has changed   If you are on your fix-nasty-bug branch and do a git rebase and manage to wreck things  the label fix-nasty-bug now refers to the wreckage  but the original versions are still there   Rebase in particular makes a temporary  non-moving  not-a-branch  label spelled ORIG HEAD that lets you find them   The filter-branch command saves all the original names as well   In some cases  there may be no obvious name  but the commits can always be found   If necessary  find yourself a  quot git guru quot  and explain what you did that led to the wreckage   The command git reflog show can also help with finding commit-IDs   If you have found what you think is some or all of your previous work  try  git log  lt commit-ID gt      ORIG HEAD after a bad rebase  for instance git show  lt commit-ID gt     or some long SHA1 value you can still see in a window  If it looks right or useful  put a name to it  git branch recover-my-stuff ORIG HEAD  and it s all back again   In fact  now both your bad rebase and your original work are in your git repo  quot forever quot   or at least  until you delete the branch names and let a few months go by  and then they get garbage-collected    You can put as many names to as many recovered commits as you like    Branch names are virtually free  except for cluttering up your git branch output  and of course they also keep commits from being garbage-collected   You can also  or instead  put tags on specific commit-IDs  if you prefer those

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I got started with the official Git tutorial  I think it s practical enough for beginners  I was  and still am  a beginner  by your definition  I barely grasp makefiles  I ve only played a bit with Apache Subversion  etc

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Workflow example with GIT   Git is extremely flexible and adapts good to any workflow  but not enforcing a particular workflow might have the negative effect of making it hard to understand what you can do with git beyond the linear  backup  workflow  and how useful branching can be for example   This blog post explains nicely a very simple but effective workflow that is really easy to setup using git   quoting from the blog post  We consider origin master to be the main branch where the source code of HEAD always reflects a production-ready state   The workflow has become popular enough to have made a project that implements this workflow  git-flow   Nice illustration of a simple workflow  where you make all your changes in develop  and only push to master when the code is in a production state     Now let s say you want to work on a new feature  or on refactoring a module  You could create a new branch  what we could call a  feature  branch  something that will take some time and might break some code  Once your feature is  stable enough  and want to move it  closer  to production  you merge your feature branch into develop  When all the bugs are sorted out after the merge and your code passes all tests rock solid  you push your changes into master   During all this process  you find a terrible security bug  that has to be fixed right away  You could have a branch called hotfixes  that make changes that are pushed quicker back into production than the normal  develop  branch   Here you have an illustration of how this feature hotfix develop production workflow might look like  well explained in the blog post  and I repeat  the blog post explains the whole process in a lot more detail and a lot better than I do

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How to configure it to ignore files   The ability to have git ignore files you don t wish it to track is very useful    To ignore a file or set of files you supply a pattern   The pattern syntax for git is fairly simple  but powerful  It is applicable to all three of the different files I will mention bellow    A blank line ignores no files  it is generally used as a separator  Lines staring with   serve as comments   The   prefix is optional and will negate the pattern  Any negated pattern that matches will override lower precedence patterns   Supports advanced expressions and wild cards   Ex  The pattern     oa   will ignore all files in the repository ending in  o or  a  object and archive files   If a pattern has a directory ending with a slash git will only match this directory and paths underneath it  This excludes regular files and symbolic links from the match   A leading slash will match all files in that path name    Ex  The pattern    c will match the file foo c but not bar awesome c    Great Example from the gitignore 5  man page     git status         Untracked files                Documentation foo html         Documentation gitignore html         file o         lib a         src internal o         cat  git info exclude     ignore objects and archives  anywhere in the tree       oa    cat Documentation  gitignore   ignore generated html files    html   except foo html which is maintained by hand  foo html   git status         Untracked files                Documentation foo html           Generally there are three different ways to ignore untracked files    1  Ignore for all users of the repository   Add a file named  gitignore to the root of your working copy   Edit  gitignore to match your preferences for which files should shouldn t be ignored   git add  gitignore    and commit when you re done     2  Ignore for only your copy of the repository   Add Edit the file  GIT DIR info exclude in your working copy  with your preferred patterns    Ex  My working copy is   src project1 so I would edit   src project1  git info exclude  You re done   3  Ignore in all situations  on your system    Global ignore patterns for your system can go in a file named what ever you wish    Mine personally is called    gitglobalignore   I can then let git know of this file by editing my    gitconfig file with the following line   core excludesfile      gitglobalignore   You re done   I find the gitignore man page to be the best resource for more information

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Checking Out Code  First go to an empty dir  use  git init  to make it a repository  then clone the remote repo into your own   git clone user host com  dir to repo   Wherever you initially clone from is where  git pull  will pull from by default

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Very good post on merging with conflicts - GitGuys  Merging With a Conflict - Conflicts And Resolutions  The blog is really great - illustrative  clean examples and understandable  Definitely worth checking out

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Seriously add the link featured in Tim s answer in the Stack Overflow post Setup Git Server with Msysgit on Windows   It flawlessly told me how to setup Git on Windows with msysgit  and is an incredibly detailed article

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What is rebasing  Rebase explanation taken from the book Pragmatic Guide to Git - Travis Swicegood  Chapter III 16   Rewriting History by Rebasing Rebasing commits is the one concept in Git that has no counterpart inside the traditional version control world  Using git rebase  you can rewrite the history of a repository in a variety of ways  It is one of the most powerful commands in Git  which makes it one of the most dangerous  rebase takes a series of commits  normally a branch  and replays them on top of another commit  normally the last commit in another branch   The parent commit changes so all the commit IDs are recalculated  This can cause problems for other developers who have your code because the IDs don   t match up  There   s a simple rule of thumb with git rebase  use it as much as you want on local commits  Once you   ve shared changes with another developer  the headache is generally not worth the trouble

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Push and pull changes  In an simplified way  just do git push and git pull  Changes are merged and if there s a conflict git will let you know and you can resolve it manually   When you first push to a remote repository you need to do a git push origin master  master being the master branch   From then on you just do the git push   Push tags with git push --tags

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How to configure it to ignore files   The ability to have git ignore files you don t wish it to track is very useful    To ignore a file or set of files you supply a pattern   The pattern syntax for git is fairly simple  but powerful  It is applicable to all three of the different files I will mention bellow    A blank line ignores no files  it is generally used as a separator  Lines staring with   serve as comments   The   prefix is optional and will negate the pattern  Any negated pattern that matches will override lower precedence patterns   Supports advanced expressions and wild cards   Ex  The pattern     oa   will ignore all files in the repository ending in  o or  a  object and archive files   If a pattern has a directory ending with a slash git will only match this directory and paths underneath it  This excludes regular files and symbolic links from the match   A leading slash will match all files in that path name    Ex  The pattern    c will match the file foo c but not bar awesome c    Great Example from the gitignore 5  man page     git status         Untracked files                Documentation foo html         Documentation gitignore html         file o         lib a         src internal o         cat  git info exclude     ignore objects and archives  anywhere in the tree       oa    cat Documentation  gitignore   ignore generated html files    html   except foo html which is maintained by hand  foo html   git status         Untracked files                Documentation foo html           Generally there are three different ways to ignore untracked files    1  Ignore for all users of the repository   Add a file named  gitignore to the root of your working copy   Edit  gitignore to match your preferences for which files should shouldn t be ignored   git add  gitignore    and commit when you re done     2  Ignore for only your copy of the repository   Add Edit the file  GIT DIR info exclude in your working copy  with your preferred patterns    Ex  My working copy is   src project1 so I would edit   src project1  git info exclude  You re done   3  Ignore in all situations  on your system    Global ignore patterns for your system can go in a file named what ever you wish    Mine personally is called    gitglobalignore   I can then let git know of this file by editing my    gitconfig file with the following line   core excludesfile      gitglobalignore   You re done   I find the gitignore man page to be the best resource for more information

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How do you create a new project repository  A git repository is simply a directory containing a special  git directory  This is different from  quot centralised quot  version-control systems  like subversion   where a  quot repository quot  is hosted on a remote server  which you checkout into a  quot working copy quot  directory  With git  your working copy is the repository  Simply run git init in the directory which contains the files you wish to track  For example  cd   code project001  git init  This creates a  git  hidden  folder in the current directory  To make a new project  run git init with an additional argument  the name of the directory to be created   git init project002   This is equivalent to  mkdir project002  amp  amp  cd project002  amp  amp  git init   To check if the current current path is within a git repository  simply run git status - if it s not a repository  it will report  quot fatal  Not a git repository quot  You could also list the  git directory  and check it contains files directories similar to the following    ls  git HEAD         config       hooks        objects  branches     description  info         refs    If for whatever reason you wish to  quot de-git quot  a repository  you wish to stop using git to track that project   Simply remove the  git directory at the base level of the repository  cd   code project001  rm -rf  git   Caution  This will destroy all revision history  all your tags  everything git has done  It will not touch the  quot current quot  files  the files you can currently see   but previous changes  deleted files and so on will be unrecoverable

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Commit Changes  Once you ve edited a file  you need to commit your changes to git   When you execute this command it will ask for a commit message - which is just a simple bit of text that tells everyone what you ve changed     git commit source main c   Will commit the file main c in the directory   source     git commit -a   the -a flag pulls in all modified files   will commit all changed files  but not new files  those need to be added to the index with git-add   If you want to commit only certain files then you will need to stage them first with git-add and then commit without the -a flag   Commiting only changes your local repository though not the remote repositories  If you want to send the commits to the remote repository then you will need to do a push     git push  lt remote gt   lt branch gt    push new commits to the  lt branch gt  on the  lt remote gt  repository   For someone coming from CVS or SVN this is a change since the commit to the central repository now requires two steps

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Checking Out Code  First go to an empty dir  use  git init  to make it a repository  then clone the remote repo into your own   git clone user host com  dir to repo   Wherever you initially clone from is where  git pull  will pull from by default

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Console UI - Tig  Installation   apt-get install tig   Usage  While inside a git repo  type  tig   to view an interactive log  hit  enter  on any log to see more information about it  h for help  which lists the basic functionality   Trivia   Tig  is  Git  backwards

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git status is your friend  use it often   Good for answering questions like    What did that command just do  What branch am I on  What changes am I about to commit  and have I forgotten anything  Was I in the middle of something last time I worked on this project  days  weeks  or perhaps months ago     Unlike  say svn status  git status runs nigh-instantly even on large projects   I often found it reassuring while learning git to use it frequently  to make sure my mental model of what was going on was accurate   Now I mostly just use it to remind myself what I ve changed since my last commit   Obviously  it s much more useful if your  gitignore is sanely configured

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How do you create a new project repository  A git repository is simply a directory containing a special  git directory  This is different from  quot centralised quot  version-control systems  like subversion   where a  quot repository quot  is hosted on a remote server  which you checkout into a  quot working copy quot  directory  With git  your working copy is the repository  Simply run git init in the directory which contains the files you wish to track  For example  cd   code project001  git init  This creates a  git  hidden  folder in the current directory  To make a new project  run git init with an additional argument  the name of the directory to be created   git init project002   This is equivalent to  mkdir project002  amp  amp  cd project002  amp  amp  git init   To check if the current current path is within a git repository  simply run git status - if it s not a repository  it will report  quot fatal  Not a git repository quot  You could also list the  git directory  and check it contains files directories similar to the following    ls  git HEAD         config       hooks        objects  branches     description  info         refs    If for whatever reason you wish to  quot de-git quot  a repository  you wish to stop using git to track that project   Simply remove the  git directory at the base level of the repository  cd   code project001  rm -rf  git   Caution  This will destroy all revision history  all your tags  everything git has done  It will not touch the  quot current quot  files  the files you can currently see   but previous changes  deleted files and so on will be unrecoverable

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Push and pull changes  In an simplified way  just do git push and git pull  Changes are merged and if there s a conflict git will let you know and you can resolve it manually   When you first push to a remote repository you need to do a git push origin master  master being the master branch   From then on you just do the git push   Push tags with git push --tags

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Git Magic is all you ll ever need  Guaranteed or your money back

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Git Magic is all you ll ever need  Guaranteed or your money back

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Console UI - Tig  Installation   apt-get install tig   Usage  While inside a git repo  type  tig   to view an interactive log  hit  enter  on any log to see more information about it  h for help  which lists the basic functionality   Trivia   Tig  is  Git  backwards

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Here s a copy of PJ Hyett s post  as it is not available anymore      Git Isn t Hard      Nov 23  2008      When we tell people why they should   use Git over Subversion  the go-to   line is     Git does Subversion better   than Subversion  but it does a lot   more than that          The    lot more    is comprised of a bunch   of stuff that makes Git really shine    but it can be pretty overwhelming for   those coming from other SCM   s like   Subversion       That said  there   s nothing stopping   you from using Git just like you use   Subversion while you   re making the   transition       Assuming you   ve installed the   necessary software and have a remote   repository somewhere  this is how you   would grab the code and push your   changes back with Subversion         svn checkout svn   foo googlecode com svn trunk foo     make your changes     svn commit -m  my first commit       And how would you do it in Git         git clone git github com pjhyett foo git     make your changes     git commit -a -m  my first commit      git push      One more command to make it happen in   Git  That extra command has large   implications  but for the purposes of   this post  that   s all we   re talking   about  one extra command       See  it really isn   t that hard       Update  I   d be remiss to not also mention that the equivalent of   updating your local copy in Subversion   compared to Git is svn update and   git pull  respectively  Only one   command in both cases

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Gity  http   macendeavor com gity

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GUIs for git    Git GUI  Included with git  mdash  Run git gui from the command line  and the Windows msysgit installer adds it to the Start menu   Git GUI can do a majority of what you d need to do with git  Including stage changes  configure git and repositories  push changes  create checkout delete branches  merge  and many other things   One of my favourite features is the  stage line  and  stage hunk  shortcuts in the right-click menu  which lets you commit specific parts of a file  You can achieve the same via git add -i  but I find it easier to use   It isn t the prettiest application  but it works on almost all platforms  being based upon Tcl Tk   Screenshots   a screencast    GitK  Also included with git  It is a git history viewer  and lets you visualise a repository s history  including branches  when they are created  and merged   You can view and search commits   Goes together nicely with git-gui     Gitnub  Mac OS X application  Mainly an equivalent of git log  but has some integration with github  like the  Network view     Looks pretty  and fits with Mac OS X  You can search repositories  The biggest critisism of Gitnub is that it shows history in a linear fashion  a single branch at a time  - it doesn t visualise branching and merging  which can be important with git  although this is a planned improvement   Download links  change log and screenshots   git repository    GitX  Intends to be a  gitk clone for OS X    It can visualise non-linear branching history  perform commits  view and search commits  and it has some other nice features like being able to  Quicklook  any file in any revision  press space in the file-list view   export any file  via drag and drop    It is far better integrated into OS X than git-gui gitk  and is fast and stable even with exceptionally large repositories   The original git repository pieter has not updated recently  over a year at time of writing   A more actively maintained branch is available at brotherbard gitx - it adds  sidebar  fetch  pull  push  add remote  merge  cherry-pick  rebase  clone  clone to   Download   Screenshots   git repository   brotherbard fork   laullon fork    SmartGit  From the homepage       SmartGit is a front-end for the   distributed version control system Git   and runs on Windows  Mac OS X and   Linux  SmartGit is intended for   developers who prefer a graphical user   interface over a command line client    to be even more productive with Git       the most powerful DVCS today    You can download it from their website   Download    TortoiseGit  TortoiseSVN Git version for Windows users       It is porting TortoiseSVN to TortoiseGit The latest release 1 2 1 0 This release can complete regular task  such commit  show log  diff two version  create branch and tag  Create patch and so on  See ReleaseNotes for detail  Welcome to contribute this project    Download    QGit     QGit is a git GUI viewer built on   Qt C          With qgit you will be able to browse   revisions history  view patch content   and changed files  graphically   following different development   branches    Download    gitg     gitg is a git repository viewer   targeting gtk  GNOME  One of its main   objectives is to provide a more   unified user experience for git   frontends across multiple desktops  It   does this not be writing a   cross-platform application  but by   close collaboration with similar   clients for other operating systems    like GitX for OS X     Features   Browse revision history  Handle large repositories  loads linux repository  17000  revisions  under 1 second   Commit changes  Stage unstage individual hunks  Revert changes  Show colorized diff of changes in revisions  Browse tree for a given revision  Export parts of the tree of a given revision  Supply any refspec which a command such as  git log  can understand to built the history  Show and switch between branches in the history view    Download  releases or source    Gitbox     Gitbox is a Mac OS X graphical   interface for Git version control   system  In a single window you see   branches  history and working   directory status       Everyday operations are easy  stage   and unstage changes with a checkbox    Commit  pull  merge and push with a   single click  Double-click a change to   show a diff with FileMerge app    Download    Gity  The Gity website doesn t have much information  but from the screenshots on there it appears to be a feature rich open source OS X git gui    Download or source    Meld     Meld is a visual diff and merge tool    You can compare two or three files and   edit them in place  diffs update   dynamically   You can compare two or   three folders and launch file   comparisons  You can browse and view a   working copy from popular version   control systems such such as CVS    Subversion  Bazaar-ng and Mercurial    and Git     Downloads    Katana  A Git GUIfor OSX by Steve Dekorte      At a glance  see which remote branches   have changes to pull and local repos    have changes to push  The git ops of    add  commit  push  pull  tag and reset   are supported as well as visual diffs   and visual browsing of project hieracy    that highlights local changes and additions    Free for 1 repository   25 for more   Download    Sprout  formerly GitMac   Focuses on making Git easy to use  Features a native Cocoa  mac-like  UI  fast repository browsing  cloning  push pull  branching merging  visual diff  remote branches  easy access to the Terminal  and more   By making the most commonly used Git actions intuitive and easy to perform  Sprout  formerly GitMac  makes Git user-friendly  Compatible with most Git workflows  Sprout is great for designers and developers  team collaboration and advanced and novice users alike   Download   Website    Tower  A feature-rich Git GUI for Mac OSX  30-day free trial   59USD for a single-user license   Download   Website    EGit     EGit is an Eclipse Team provider for the Git version control system    Git is a distributed SCM  which means every developer has a full copy   of all history of every revision of the code  making queries against   the history very fast and versatile       The EGit project is implementing Eclipse tooling on top of the JGit   Java implementation of Git    Download   Website    Git Extensions  Open Source for Windows - installs everything you need to work with Git in a single package  easy to use      Git Extensions is a toolkit to make working with Git on Windows more intuitive  The shell extension will intergrate in Windows Explorer and presents a context menu on files and directories  There is also a Visual Studio plugin to use git from Visual Studio     Download  Big thanks to dbr for elaborating on the git gui stuff     SourceTree  SourceTree is a free Mac client for Git  Mercurial and SVN  Built by Atlassian  the folks behind BitBucket  it seems to work equally well with any VC system  which allows you to master a single tool for use with all of your projects  however they re version-controlled  Feature-packed  and FREE      Expert-Ready  amp  Feature-packed for both novice and advanced users       Review outgoing and incoming changesets     Cherry-pick between branches     Patch handling  rebase  stash   shelve and much more     Download   Website

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Workflow example with GIT   Git is extremely flexible and adapts good to any workflow  but not enforcing a particular workflow might have the negative effect of making it hard to understand what you can do with git beyond the linear  backup  workflow  and how useful branching can be for example   This blog post explains nicely a very simple but effective workflow that is really easy to setup using git   quoting from the blog post  We consider origin master to be the main branch where the source code of HEAD always reflects a production-ready state   The workflow has become popular enough to have made a project that implements this workflow  git-flow   Nice illustration of a simple workflow  where you make all your changes in develop  and only push to master when the code is in a production state     Now let s say you want to work on a new feature  or on refactoring a module  You could create a new branch  what we could call a  feature  branch  something that will take some time and might break some code  Once your feature is  stable enough  and want to move it  closer  to production  you merge your feature branch into develop  When all the bugs are sorted out after the merge and your code passes all tests rock solid  you push your changes into master   During all this process  you find a terrible security bug  that has to be fixed right away  You could have a branch called hotfixes  that make changes that are pushed quicker back into production than the normal  develop  branch   Here you have an illustration of how this feature hotfix develop production workflow might look like  well explained in the blog post  and I repeat  the blog post explains the whole process in a lot more detail and a lot better than I do

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Well  despite the fact that you asked that we not  simply  link to other resources  it s pretty foolish when there already exists a community grown  and growing  resource that s really quite good  the Git Community Book   Seriously  this 20  questions in a question is going to be anything but concise and consistent   The Git Community Book is available as both HTML and PDF and answers many of your questions with clear  well formatted and peer reviewed answers and in a format that allows you to jump straight to your problem at hand   Alas  if my post really upsets you then I ll delete it   Just say so

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How do you  tag  a particular set of revisions  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   Using the git tag command   To simply  tag  the current revision  you would just run    git tag -a thetagname git tag -a 0 1 git tag -a 2 6 1-rc1 -m  Released on 01 02 03    To list the current tags  simply run git tag with no arguments  or -l  lower case L      git tag -a thetagname   and enter a message  or use -m  My tag annotation    git tag -l thetagname   To delete a tag  you use the -d flag     git tag -d thetagname  Deleted tag  thetagname    git tag  no output    To tag a specific  previous  commit  you simply do    git tag  tag name   revision SHA1 hash    For example   git tag 1 1 1 81b15a68c6c3e71f72e766931df4e6499990385b     Note  by default  git creates a  lightweight  tag  basically a reference to a specific revision   The  right  way is to use the -a flag  This will launch your editor asking for a tag message  identical to asking for a commit message  you can also use the -m flag to supply the tag message on the command line   Using an annotated tag creates an object with its own ID  date  tagger  author   and optionally a GPG signature  using the -s tag    For further information on this  see this post  git tag mytagwithmsg -a -m  This is a tag  with message    And to list the tags with annotations  use the -n1 flag to show 1 line of each tag message  -n245 to show the first 245 lines of each annotation  and so on      git tag -l -n1 mytagwithmsg    This is a tag  with message   For more information  see the git-tag 1  Manual Page

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How to install Git  On Windows   Install msysgit  There are several downloads    Git  Use this unless you specifically need one of the other options below  PortableGit  Use this if you want to run Git on a PC without installing on that PC  e g  running Git from a USB drive  msysGit  Use this if you want to develop Git itself   If you just want to use Git for your source code  but don t want to edit Git s source code  you don t need this    This also installs a Cygwin bash shell  so you can use the git in a nicer shell  than cmd exe   and also includes git-gui  accessible via git gui command  or the Start  gt  All Programs  gt  Git menu   Mac OS X  Use the git-osx-installer  or you can also install from source  Via a package manager  Install git using your native package manager  For example  on Debian  or Ubuntu    apt-get install git-core   Or on Mac OS X  via MacPorts   sudo port install git-core bash completion doc      or fink   fink install git      or Homebrew   brew install git   On Red Hat based distributions  such as Fedora   yum install git   In Cygwin the Git package can be found under the  devel  section  From source  Mac OS X Linux BSD etc    In Mac OS X  if you have the Developer Tools installed  you can compile Git from source very easily  Download the latest version of Git as a  tar bz or  tar gz from http   git-scm com   and extract it  double click in Finder   On Linux BSD etc  it should be much the same  For example  in Debian  and Ubuntu   you need to install the build-essential package via apt   Then in a Terminal  cd to where you extracted the files  Running cd   Downloads git   should work   and then run      configure  amp  amp  make  amp  amp  sudo make install   This will install Git into the default place   usr local - so git will be in  usr local bin git   It will prompt you to enter your password  for sudo   this is so it can write to the  usr local  directory  which can only be accessed by the  root  user so sudo is required   If you with to install it somewhere separate  so Git s files aren t mixed in with other tools   use --prefix with the configure command     configure --prefix  usr local gitpath make sudo make install   This will install the git binary into  usr local bin gitpath bin git - so you don t have to type that every time you  you should add into your  PATH by adding the following line into your    profile   export PATH    PATH   usr local bin gitpath bin     If you do not have sudo access  you can use --prefix  Users myusername bin and install into your home directory  Remember to add   bin  to  PATH  The script x-git-update-to-latest-version automates a lot of this      This script updates my local clone of the git repo  localy at   work track git   and then configures  installs  at  usr local git-git describe  and updates the  usr local git symlink       This way  I can have  usr local git bin in my PATH and I m always using the latest version       The latest version of this script also installs the man pages  You need to tweak your MANPATH to include the  usr local git share man directory

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How do you set up a shared team repository   How to set up a normal repository is described here -- but how do you set up a team repository that everybody can pull and push from and to   Using a shared NFS file system  Assuming your team already has for instance a shared group membership that can be used   mkdir  your share folder project git cd  your share folder project git newgrp yourteamgroup   if necessary git init --bare --shared   To start using this repository the easiest thing to do is start from a local repository you already have been using   cd your local workspace project git remote add origin  your share folder project git git push origin master   Others can now clone this and start working   cd your local workspace git clone  your share folder project git   Using SSH  Set up a user account on the target server   Whether you use an account with no password  an account with a password  or use authorized keys really depend on your required level of security   Take a look at Configuring Git over SSH for some more information   If all developers use the same account for accessing this shared repository  you do not need to use the --shared option as above   After initing the repository in the same way as above  you do the initial push like this   cd your local workspace project git remote add origin user server  path to project git git push origin master   See the similarity with the above   The only thing that might happen in addition is SSH asking for a password if the account has a password   If you get this prompt on an account without a password the SSH server probably has disabled PermitEmptyPasswords   Cloning now looks like this   cd your local workspace git clone user server  path to project git

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git status is your friend  use it often   Good for answering questions like    What did that command just do  What branch am I on  What changes am I about to commit  and have I forgotten anything  Was I in the middle of something last time I worked on this project  days  weeks  or perhaps months ago     Unlike  say svn status  git status runs nigh-instantly even on large projects   I often found it reassuring while learning git to use it frequently  to make sure my mental model of what was going on was accurate   Now I mostly just use it to remind myself what I ve changed since my last commit   Obviously  it s much more useful if your  gitignore is sanely configured

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Console UI - Tig  Installation   apt-get install tig   Usage  While inside a git repo  type  tig   to view an interactive log  hit  enter  on any log to see more information about it  h for help  which lists the basic functionality   Trivia   Tig  is  Git  backwards

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How to install Git  On Windows   Install msysgit  There are several downloads    Git  Use this unless you specifically need one of the other options below  PortableGit  Use this if you want to run Git on a PC without installing on that PC  e g  running Git from a USB drive  msysGit  Use this if you want to develop Git itself   If you just want to use Git for your source code  but don t want to edit Git s source code  you don t need this    This also installs a Cygwin bash shell  so you can use the git in a nicer shell  than cmd exe   and also includes git-gui  accessible via git gui command  or the Start  gt  All Programs  gt  Git menu   Mac OS X  Use the git-osx-installer  or you can also install from source  Via a package manager  Install git using your native package manager  For example  on Debian  or Ubuntu    apt-get install git-core   Or on Mac OS X  via MacPorts   sudo port install git-core bash completion doc      or fink   fink install git      or Homebrew   brew install git   On Red Hat based distributions  such as Fedora   yum install git   In Cygwin the Git package can be found under the  devel  section  From source  Mac OS X Linux BSD etc    In Mac OS X  if you have the Developer Tools installed  you can compile Git from source very easily  Download the latest version of Git as a  tar bz or  tar gz from http   git-scm com   and extract it  double click in Finder   On Linux BSD etc  it should be much the same  For example  in Debian  and Ubuntu   you need to install the build-essential package via apt   Then in a Terminal  cd to where you extracted the files  Running cd   Downloads git   should work   and then run      configure  amp  amp  make  amp  amp  sudo make install   This will install Git into the default place   usr local - so git will be in  usr local bin git   It will prompt you to enter your password  for sudo   this is so it can write to the  usr local  directory  which can only be accessed by the  root  user so sudo is required   If you with to install it somewhere separate  so Git s files aren t mixed in with other tools   use --prefix with the configure command     configure --prefix  usr local gitpath make sudo make install   This will install the git binary into  usr local bin gitpath bin git - so you don t have to type that every time you  you should add into your  PATH by adding the following line into your    profile   export PATH    PATH   usr local bin gitpath bin     If you do not have sudo access  you can use --prefix  Users myusername bin and install into your home directory  Remember to add   bin  to  PATH  The script x-git-update-to-latest-version automates a lot of this      This script updates my local clone of the git repo  localy at   work track git   and then configures  installs  at  usr local git-git describe  and updates the  usr local git symlink       This way  I can have  usr local git bin in my PATH and I m always using the latest version       The latest version of this script also installs the man pages  You need to tweak your MANPATH to include the  usr local git share man directory

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GUIs for git    Git GUI  Included with git  mdash  Run git gui from the command line  and the Windows msysgit installer adds it to the Start menu   Git GUI can do a majority of what you d need to do with git  Including stage changes  configure git and repositories  push changes  create checkout delete branches  merge  and many other things   One of my favourite features is the  stage line  and  stage hunk  shortcuts in the right-click menu  which lets you commit specific parts of a file  You can achieve the same via git add -i  but I find it easier to use   It isn t the prettiest application  but it works on almost all platforms  being based upon Tcl Tk   Screenshots   a screencast    GitK  Also included with git  It is a git history viewer  and lets you visualise a repository s history  including branches  when they are created  and merged   You can view and search commits   Goes together nicely with git-gui     Gitnub  Mac OS X application  Mainly an equivalent of git log  but has some integration with github  like the  Network view     Looks pretty  and fits with Mac OS X  You can search repositories  The biggest critisism of Gitnub is that it shows history in a linear fashion  a single branch at a time  - it doesn t visualise branching and merging  which can be important with git  although this is a planned improvement   Download links  change log and screenshots   git repository    GitX  Intends to be a  gitk clone for OS X    It can visualise non-linear branching history  perform commits  view and search commits  and it has some other nice features like being able to  Quicklook  any file in any revision  press space in the file-list view   export any file  via drag and drop    It is far better integrated into OS X than git-gui gitk  and is fast and stable even with exceptionally large repositories   The original git repository pieter has not updated recently  over a year at time of writing   A more actively maintained branch is available at brotherbard gitx - it adds  sidebar  fetch  pull  push  add remote  merge  cherry-pick  rebase  clone  clone to   Download   Screenshots   git repository   brotherbard fork   laullon fork    SmartGit  From the homepage       SmartGit is a front-end for the   distributed version control system Git   and runs on Windows  Mac OS X and   Linux  SmartGit is intended for   developers who prefer a graphical user   interface over a command line client    to be even more productive with Git       the most powerful DVCS today    You can download it from their website   Download    TortoiseGit  TortoiseSVN Git version for Windows users       It is porting TortoiseSVN to TortoiseGit The latest release 1 2 1 0 This release can complete regular task  such commit  show log  diff two version  create branch and tag  Create patch and so on  See ReleaseNotes for detail  Welcome to contribute this project    Download    QGit     QGit is a git GUI viewer built on   Qt C          With qgit you will be able to browse   revisions history  view patch content   and changed files  graphically   following different development   branches    Download    gitg     gitg is a git repository viewer   targeting gtk  GNOME  One of its main   objectives is to provide a more   unified user experience for git   frontends across multiple desktops  It   does this not be writing a   cross-platform application  but by   close collaboration with similar   clients for other operating systems    like GitX for OS X     Features   Browse revision history  Handle large repositories  loads linux repository  17000  revisions  under 1 second   Commit changes  Stage unstage individual hunks  Revert changes  Show colorized diff of changes in revisions  Browse tree for a given revision  Export parts of the tree of a given revision  Supply any refspec which a command such as  git log  can understand to built the history  Show and switch between branches in the history view    Download  releases or source    Gitbox     Gitbox is a Mac OS X graphical   interface for Git version control   system  In a single window you see   branches  history and working   directory status       Everyday operations are easy  stage   and unstage changes with a checkbox    Commit  pull  merge and push with a   single click  Double-click a change to   show a diff with FileMerge app    Download    Gity  The Gity website doesn t have much information  but from the screenshots on there it appears to be a feature rich open source OS X git gui    Download or source    Meld     Meld is a visual diff and merge tool    You can compare two or three files and   edit them in place  diffs update   dynamically   You can compare two or   three folders and launch file   comparisons  You can browse and view a   working copy from popular version   control systems such such as CVS    Subversion  Bazaar-ng and Mercurial    and Git     Downloads    Katana  A Git GUIfor OSX by Steve Dekorte      At a glance  see which remote branches   have changes to pull and local repos    have changes to push  The git ops of    add  commit  push  pull  tag and reset   are supported as well as visual diffs   and visual browsing of project hieracy    that highlights local changes and additions    Free for 1 repository   25 for more   Download    Sprout  formerly GitMac   Focuses on making Git easy to use  Features a native Cocoa  mac-like  UI  fast repository browsing  cloning  push pull  branching merging  visual diff  remote branches  easy access to the Terminal  and more   By making the most commonly used Git actions intuitive and easy to perform  Sprout  formerly GitMac  makes Git user-friendly  Compatible with most Git workflows  Sprout is great for designers and developers  team collaboration and advanced and novice users alike   Download   Website    Tower  A feature-rich Git GUI for Mac OSX  30-day free trial   59USD for a single-user license   Download   Website    EGit     EGit is an Eclipse Team provider for the Git version control system    Git is a distributed SCM  which means every developer has a full copy   of all history of every revision of the code  making queries against   the history very fast and versatile       The EGit project is implementing Eclipse tooling on top of the JGit   Java implementation of Git    Download   Website    Git Extensions  Open Source for Windows - installs everything you need to work with Git in a single package  easy to use      Git Extensions is a toolkit to make working with Git on Windows more intuitive  The shell extension will intergrate in Windows Explorer and presents a context menu on files and directories  There is also a Visual Studio plugin to use git from Visual Studio     Download  Big thanks to dbr for elaborating on the git gui stuff     SourceTree  SourceTree is a free Mac client for Git  Mercurial and SVN  Built by Atlassian  the folks behind BitBucket  it seems to work equally well with any VC system  which allows you to master a single tool for use with all of your projects  however they re version-controlled  Feature-packed  and FREE      Expert-Ready  amp  Feature-packed for both novice and advanced users       Review outgoing and incoming changesets     Cherry-pick between branches     Patch handling  rebase  stash   shelve and much more     Download   Website

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Push and pull changes  In an simplified way  just do git push and git pull  Changes are merged and if there s a conflict git will let you know and you can resolve it manually   When you first push to a remote repository you need to do a git push origin master  master being the master branch   From then on you just do the git push   Push tags with git push --tags

User · Answer

Resource  Definitely check out Scott Chacon s Gitcasts  especially the Railsconf talk   Github is awesome and also has some helpful guides

User · Answer

How do you compare two revisions of a file  or your current file and a previous revision   Compare command is git diff   To compare 2 revisions of a file     git diff  lt commit1 gt   lt commit2 gt   lt file name gt    That diffs commit1 against commit2  if you change order then files are diffed the other way round  which may not be what you expect     To compare current staged file against the repository     git diff --staged  lt file name gt    To compare current unstaged file against the repository     git diff  lt file name gt

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How to install Git  On Windows   Install msysgit  There are several downloads    Git  Use this unless you specifically need one of the other options below  PortableGit  Use this if you want to run Git on a PC without installing on that PC  e g  running Git from a USB drive  msysGit  Use this if you want to develop Git itself   If you just want to use Git for your source code  but don t want to edit Git s source code  you don t need this    This also installs a Cygwin bash shell  so you can use the git in a nicer shell  than cmd exe   and also includes git-gui  accessible via git gui command  or the Start  gt  All Programs  gt  Git menu   Mac OS X  Use the git-osx-installer  or you can also install from source  Via a package manager  Install git using your native package manager  For example  on Debian  or Ubuntu    apt-get install git-core   Or on Mac OS X  via MacPorts   sudo port install git-core bash completion doc      or fink   fink install git      or Homebrew   brew install git   On Red Hat based distributions  such as Fedora   yum install git   In Cygwin the Git package can be found under the  devel  section  From source  Mac OS X Linux BSD etc    In Mac OS X  if you have the Developer Tools installed  you can compile Git from source very easily  Download the latest version of Git as a  tar bz or  tar gz from http   git-scm com   and extract it  double click in Finder   On Linux BSD etc  it should be much the same  For example  in Debian  and Ubuntu   you need to install the build-essential package via apt   Then in a Terminal  cd to where you extracted the files  Running cd   Downloads git   should work   and then run      configure  amp  amp  make  amp  amp  sudo make install   This will install Git into the default place   usr local - so git will be in  usr local bin git   It will prompt you to enter your password  for sudo   this is so it can write to the  usr local  directory  which can only be accessed by the  root  user so sudo is required   If you with to install it somewhere separate  so Git s files aren t mixed in with other tools   use --prefix with the configure command     configure --prefix  usr local gitpath make sudo make install   This will install the git binary into  usr local bin gitpath bin git - so you don t have to type that every time you  you should add into your  PATH by adding the following line into your    profile   export PATH    PATH   usr local bin gitpath bin     If you do not have sudo access  you can use --prefix  Users myusername bin and install into your home directory  Remember to add   bin  to  PATH  The script x-git-update-to-latest-version automates a lot of this      This script updates my local clone of the git repo  localy at   work track git   and then configures  installs  at  usr local git-git describe  and updates the  usr local git symlink       This way  I can have  usr local git bin in my PATH and I m always using the latest version       The latest version of this script also installs the man pages  You need to tweak your MANPATH to include the  usr local git share man directory

User · Answer

How do you see the history of revisions to a file   git log -- filename

User · Answer

Why yet another howto  There are really good ones on the net  like the git guide which is perfect to begin  It has good links including the git book to which one can contribute  hosted on git hub  and which is perfect for this collective task   On stackoverflow  I would really prefer to see your favorite tricks    Mine  which I discovered only lately  is git stash  explained here  which enables you to save your current job and go to another branch  EDIT  as the previous post  if you really prefer stackoverlow format with posts as a wiki I will delete this answer

User · Answer

Git Magic is all you ll ever need  Guaranteed or your money back

User · Answer

The Pro Git free book is definitely my favorite  especially for beginners

User · Answer

I ve also found Git Internals to be very useful   It is written by Scott Chacon  author of Pro Git  and maintainer of the Git Community Book    What I like about Git Internals is it focuses on the concepts first and then the commands  and being that it is  100 small pages it is quickly digestible

User · Answer

Well  despite the fact that you asked that we not  simply  link to other resources  it s pretty foolish when there already exists a community grown  and growing  resource that s really quite good  the Git Community Book   Seriously  this 20  questions in a question is going to be anything but concise and consistent   The Git Community Book is available as both HTML and PDF and answers many of your questions with clear  well formatted and peer reviewed answers and in a format that allows you to jump straight to your problem at hand   Alas  if my post really upsets you then I ll delete it   Just say so

User · Answer

git status is your friend  use it often   Good for answering questions like    What did that command just do  What branch am I on  What changes am I about to commit  and have I forgotten anything  Was I in the middle of something last time I worked on this project  days  weeks  or perhaps months ago     Unlike  say svn status  git status runs nigh-instantly even on large projects   I often found it reassuring while learning git to use it frequently  to make sure my mental model of what was going on was accurate   Now I mostly just use it to remind myself what I ve changed since my last commit   Obviously  it s much more useful if your  gitignore is sanely configured

User · Answer

I ve also found Git Internals to be very useful   It is written by Scott Chacon  author of Pro Git  and maintainer of the Git Community Book    What I like about Git Internals is it focuses on the concepts first and then the commands  and being that it is  100 small pages it is quickly digestible

User · Answer

Git Magic is all you ll ever need  Guaranteed or your money back

User · Answer

A real good paper for understanding how Git works is The Git Parable  Very recommended

User · Answer

How do you merge branches   If you want to merge a branch  e g  master to release   make sure your current branch is the target branch you d like to merge into  use git branch or git status to see your current branch    Then use  git merge master    where master is the name of the branch you want to merge with the current branch    If there are any conflicts  you can use  git diff   to see pending conflicts you have to resolve

User · Answer

Checking Out Code  First go to an empty dir  use  git init  to make it a repository  then clone the remote repo into your own   git clone user host com  dir to repo   Wherever you initially clone from is where  git pull  will pull from by default

User · Answer

How can I create a branch on a remote repository   Assuming that you have cloned your remote repository from some single remote repository     create a new branch locally git branch name of branch git checkout name of branch   edit add remove files              Commit your changes locally git add fileName git commit -m Message   push changes and new branch to remote repository  git push origin name of branch name of branch

User · Answer

WRT good GUIs frontends  you may also want to check out qgit which is a cross-platform  Linux Win32  repository viewer for Git and can be also used as high level frontend for the most common Git operations  in fact it can be easily enhanced by so called  custom actions  so that users can provide customized actions

User · Answer

How do you see the history of revisions to a file   git log -- filename

User · Answer

How do you merge branches   If you want to merge a branch  e g  master to release   make sure your current branch is the target branch you d like to merge into  use git branch or git status to see your current branch    Then use  git merge master    where master is the name of the branch you want to merge with the current branch    If there are any conflicts  you can use  git diff   to see pending conflicts you have to resolve

User · Answer

Git Reset  Say you make a pull  merge it into your code  and decide you don t like it  Use git-log  or tig  and find the hash of wherever you want to go back to  probably your last commit before the pull merge  copy the hash  and do     Revert to a previous commit by hash  git-reset --hard  lt hash gt    Instead of the hash  you can use HEAD  as a shortcut for the previous commit     Revert to previous commit  git-reset --hard HEAD

User · Answer

Commit Changes  Once you ve edited a file  you need to commit your changes to git   When you execute this command it will ask for a commit message - which is just a simple bit of text that tells everyone what you ve changed     git commit source main c   Will commit the file main c in the directory   source     git commit -a   the -a flag pulls in all modified files   will commit all changed files  but not new files  those need to be added to the index with git-add   If you want to commit only certain files then you will need to stage them first with git-add and then commit without the -a flag   Commiting only changes your local repository though not the remote repositories  If you want to send the commits to the remote repository then you will need to do a push     git push  lt remote gt   lt branch gt    push new commits to the  lt branch gt  on the  lt remote gt  repository   For someone coming from CVS or SVN this is a change since the commit to the central repository now requires two steps

User · Answer

Resource  Definitely check out Scott Chacon s Gitcasts  especially the Railsconf talk   Github is awesome and also has some helpful guides

User · Answer

Resource  Definitely check out Scott Chacon s Gitcasts  especially the Railsconf talk   Github is awesome and also has some helpful guides

User · Answer

Push and pull changes  In an simplified way  just do git push and git pull  Changes are merged and if there s a conflict git will let you know and you can resolve it manually   When you first push to a remote repository you need to do a git push origin master  master being the master branch   From then on you just do the git push   Push tags with git push --tags

User · Answer

How do you branch   The default branch in a git repository is called master      To create a new branch use    git branch  lt branch-name gt    To see a list of all branches in the current repository type  git branch   If you want to switch to another branch you can use  git checkout  lt branch-name gt    To create a new branch and switch to it in one step  git checkout -b  lt branch-name gt    To delete a branch  use  git branch -d  lt branch-name gt    To create a branch with the changes from the current branch  do  git stash git stash branch  lt branch-name gt

User · Answer

Console UI - Tig  Installation   apt-get install tig   Usage  While inside a git repo  type  tig   to view an interactive log  hit  enter  on any log to see more information about it  h for help  which lists the basic functionality   Trivia   Tig  is  Git  backwards

User · Answer

How to track remote branches  Assuming there is a remote repository that you cloned your local repository from and also assuming that there is a branch named  some branch  on that remote repository  here is how to track it locally     list remote branches git branch -r    start tracking one remote branch git branch --track some branch origin some branch    change to the branch locally git checkout some branch    make changes and commit them locally         push your changes to the remote repository  git push

User · Answer

Commit Changes  Once you ve edited a file  you need to commit your changes to git   When you execute this command it will ask for a commit message - which is just a simple bit of text that tells everyone what you ve changed     git commit source main c   Will commit the file main c in the directory   source     git commit -a   the -a flag pulls in all modified files   will commit all changed files  but not new files  those need to be added to the index with git-add   If you want to commit only certain files then you will need to stage them first with git-add and then commit without the -a flag   Commiting only changes your local repository though not the remote repositories  If you want to send the commits to the remote repository then you will need to do a push     git push  lt remote gt   lt branch gt    push new commits to the  lt branch gt  on the  lt remote gt  repository   For someone coming from CVS or SVN this is a change since the commit to the central repository now requires two steps

User · Answer

git status is your friend  use it often   Good for answering questions like    What did that command just do  What branch am I on  What changes am I about to commit  and have I forgotten anything  Was I in the middle of something last time I worked on this project  days  weeks  or perhaps months ago     Unlike  say svn status  git status runs nigh-instantly even on large projects   I often found it reassuring while learning git to use it frequently  to make sure my mental model of what was going on was accurate   Now I mostly just use it to remind myself what I ve changed since my last commit   Obviously  it s much more useful if your  gitignore is sanely configured

User · Answer

Very good post on merging with conflicts - GitGuys  Merging With a Conflict - Conflicts And Resolutions  The blog is really great - illustrative  clean examples and understandable  Definitely worth checking out

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Git Reset  Say you make a pull  merge it into your code  and decide you don t like it  Use git-log  or tig  and find the hash of wherever you want to go back to  probably your last commit before the pull merge  copy the hash  and do     Revert to a previous commit by hash  git-reset --hard  lt hash gt    Instead of the hash  you can use HEAD  as a shortcut for the previous commit     Revert to previous commit  git-reset --hard HEAD

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WRT good GUIs frontends  you may also want to check out qgit which is a cross-platform  Linux Win32  repository viewer for Git and can be also used as high level frontend for the most common Git operations  in fact it can be easily enhanced by so called  custom actions  so that users can provide customized actions

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Git Reset  Say you make a pull  merge it into your code  and decide you don t like it  Use git-log  or tig  and find the hash of wherever you want to go back to  probably your last commit before the pull merge  copy the hash  and do     Revert to a previous commit by hash  git-reset --hard  lt hash gt    Instead of the hash  you can use HEAD  as a shortcut for the previous commit     Revert to previous commit  git-reset --hard HEAD

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How do you create a new project repository  A git repository is simply a directory containing a special  git directory  This is different from  quot centralised quot  version-control systems  like subversion   where a  quot repository quot  is hosted on a remote server  which you checkout into a  quot working copy quot  directory  With git  your working copy is the repository  Simply run git init in the directory which contains the files you wish to track  For example  cd   code project001  git init  This creates a  git  hidden  folder in the current directory  To make a new project  run git init with an additional argument  the name of the directory to be created   git init project002   This is equivalent to  mkdir project002  amp  amp  cd project002  amp  amp  git init   To check if the current current path is within a git repository  simply run git status - if it s not a repository  it will report  quot fatal  Not a git repository quot  You could also list the  git directory  and check it contains files directories similar to the following    ls  git HEAD         config       hooks        objects  branches     description  info         refs    If for whatever reason you wish to  quot de-git quot  a repository  you wish to stop using git to track that project   Simply remove the  git directory at the base level of the repository  cd   code project001  rm -rf  git   Caution  This will destroy all revision history  all your tags  everything git has done  It will not touch the  quot current quot  files  the files you can currently see   but previous changes  deleted files and so on will be unrecoverable

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I found this post to be very useful to get me started  I still need to read the book and other resources but the post was helpful in  as the title says   understanding git conceptually   I also recommend taking the Git  amp  GitHub course offered at RubyLearning

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Why yet another howto  There are really good ones on the net  like the git guide which is perfect to begin  It has good links including the git book to which one can contribute  hosted on git hub  and which is perfect for this collective task   On stackoverflow  I would really prefer to see your favorite tricks    Mine  which I discovered only lately  is git stash  explained here  which enables you to save your current job and go to another branch  EDIT  as the previous post  if you really prefer stackoverlow format with posts as a wiki I will delete this answer

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A real good paper for understanding how Git works is The Git Parable  Very recommended

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How to track remote branches  Assuming there is a remote repository that you cloned your local repository from and also assuming that there is a branch named  some branch  on that remote repository  here is how to track it locally     list remote branches git branch -r    start tracking one remote branch git branch --track some branch origin some branch    change to the branch locally git checkout some branch    make changes and commit them locally         push your changes to the remote repository  git push

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Well  despite the fact that you asked that we not  simply  link to other resources  it s pretty foolish when there already exists a community grown  and growing  resource that s really quite good  the Git Community Book   Seriously  this 20  questions in a question is going to be anything but concise and consistent   The Git Community Book is available as both HTML and PDF and answers many of your questions with clear  well formatted and peer reviewed answers and in a format that allows you to jump straight to your problem at hand   Alas  if my post really upsets you then I ll delete it   Just say so

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How do you compare two revisions of a file  or your current file and a previous revision   Compare command is git diff   To compare 2 revisions of a file     git diff  lt commit1 gt   lt commit2 gt   lt file name gt    That diffs commit1 against commit2  if you change order then files are diffed the other way round  which may not be what you expect     To compare current staged file against the repository     git diff --staged  lt file name gt    To compare current unstaged file against the repository     git diff  lt file name gt

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I got started with the official Git tutorial  I think it s practical enough for beginners  I was  and still am  a beginner  by your definition  I barely grasp makefiles  I ve only played a bit with Apache Subversion  etc

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GUIs for git    Git GUI  Included with git  mdash  Run git gui from the command line  and the Windows msysgit installer adds it to the Start menu   Git GUI can do a majority of what you d need to do with git  Including stage changes  configure git and repositories  push changes  create checkout delete branches  merge  and many other things   One of my favourite features is the  stage line  and  stage hunk  shortcuts in the right-click menu  which lets you commit specific parts of a file  You can achieve the same via git add -i  but I find it easier to use   It isn t the prettiest application  but it works on almost all platforms  being based upon Tcl Tk   Screenshots   a screencast    GitK  Also included with git  It is a git history viewer  and lets you visualise a repository s history  including branches  when they are created  and merged   You can view and search commits   Goes together nicely with git-gui     Gitnub  Mac OS X application  Mainly an equivalent of git log  but has some integration with github  like the  Network view     Looks pretty  and fits with Mac OS X  You can search repositories  The biggest critisism of Gitnub is that it shows history in a linear fashion  a single branch at a time  - it doesn t visualise branching and merging  which can be important with git  although this is a planned improvement   Download links  change log and screenshots   git repository    GitX  Intends to be a  gitk clone for OS X    It can visualise non-linear branching history  perform commits  view and search commits  and it has some other nice features like being able to  Quicklook  any file in any revision  press space in the file-list view   export any file  via drag and drop    It is far better integrated into OS X than git-gui gitk  and is fast and stable even with exceptionally large repositories   The original git repository pieter has not updated recently  over a year at time of writing   A more actively maintained branch is available at brotherbard gitx - it adds  sidebar  fetch  pull  push  add remote  merge  cherry-pick  rebase  clone  clone to   Download   Screenshots   git repository   brotherbard fork   laullon fork    SmartGit  From the homepage       SmartGit is a front-end for the   distributed version control system Git   and runs on Windows  Mac OS X and   Linux  SmartGit is intended for   developers who prefer a graphical user   interface over a command line client    to be even more productive with Git       the most powerful DVCS today    You can download it from their website   Download    TortoiseGit  TortoiseSVN Git version for Windows users       It is porting TortoiseSVN to TortoiseGit The latest release 1 2 1 0 This release can complete regular task  such commit  show log  diff two version  create branch and tag  Create patch and so on  See ReleaseNotes for detail  Welcome to contribute this project    Download    QGit     QGit is a git GUI viewer built on   Qt C          With qgit you will be able to browse   revisions history  view patch content   and changed files  graphically   following different development   branches    Download    gitg     gitg is a git repository viewer   targeting gtk  GNOME  One of its main   objectives is to provide a more   unified user experience for git   frontends across multiple desktops  It   does this not be writing a   cross-platform application  but by   close collaboration with similar   clients for other operating systems    like GitX for OS X     Features   Browse revision history  Handle large repositories  loads linux repository  17000  revisions  under 1 second   Commit changes  Stage unstage individual hunks  Revert changes  Show colorized diff of changes in revisions  Browse tree for a given revision  Export parts of the tree of a given revision  Supply any refspec which a command such as  git log  can understand to built the history  Show and switch between branches in the history view    Download  releases or source    Gitbox     Gitbox is a Mac OS X graphical   interface for Git version control   system  In a single window you see   branches  history and working   directory status       Everyday operations are easy  stage   and unstage changes with a checkbox    Commit  pull  merge and push with a   single click  Double-click a change to   show a diff with FileMerge app    Download    Gity  The Gity website doesn t have much information  but from the screenshots on there it appears to be a feature rich open source OS X git gui    Download or source    Meld     Meld is a visual diff and merge tool    You can compare two or three files and   edit them in place  diffs update   dynamically   You can compare two or   three folders and launch file   comparisons  You can browse and view a   working copy from popular version   control systems such such as CVS    Subversion  Bazaar-ng and Mercurial    and Git     Downloads    Katana  A Git GUIfor OSX by Steve Dekorte      At a glance  see which remote branches   have changes to pull and local repos    have changes to push  The git ops of    add  commit  push  pull  tag and reset   are supported as well as visual diffs   and visual browsing of project hieracy    that highlights local changes and additions    Free for 1 repository   25 for more   Download    Sprout  formerly GitMac   Focuses on making Git easy to use  Features a native Cocoa  mac-like  UI  fast repository browsing  cloning  push pull  branching merging  visual diff  remote branches  easy access to the Terminal  and more   By making the most commonly used Git actions intuitive and easy to perform  Sprout  formerly GitMac  makes Git user-friendly  Compatible with most Git workflows  Sprout is great for designers and developers  team collaboration and advanced and novice users alike   Download   Website    Tower  A feature-rich Git GUI for Mac OSX  30-day free trial   59USD for a single-user license   Download   Website    EGit     EGit is an Eclipse Team provider for the Git version control system    Git is a distributed SCM  which means every developer has a full copy   of all history of every revision of the code  making queries against   the history very fast and versatile       The EGit project is implementing Eclipse tooling on top of the JGit   Java implementation of Git    Download   Website    Git Extensions  Open Source for Windows - installs everything you need to work with Git in a single package  easy to use      Git Extensions is a toolkit to make working with Git on Windows more intuitive  The shell extension will intergrate in Windows Explorer and presents a context menu on files and directories  There is also a Visual Studio plugin to use git from Visual Studio     Download  Big thanks to dbr for elaborating on the git gui stuff     SourceTree  SourceTree is a free Mac client for Git  Mercurial and SVN  Built by Atlassian  the folks behind BitBucket  it seems to work equally well with any VC system  which allows you to master a single tool for use with all of your projects  however they re version-controlled  Feature-packed  and FREE      Expert-Ready  amp  Feature-packed for both novice and advanced users       Review outgoing and incoming changesets     Cherry-pick between branches     Patch handling  rebase  stash   shelve and much more     Download   Website

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How to configure it to ignore files   The ability to have git ignore files you don t wish it to track is very useful    To ignore a file or set of files you supply a pattern   The pattern syntax for git is fairly simple  but powerful  It is applicable to all three of the different files I will mention bellow    A blank line ignores no files  it is generally used as a separator  Lines staring with   serve as comments   The   prefix is optional and will negate the pattern  Any negated pattern that matches will override lower precedence patterns   Supports advanced expressions and wild cards   Ex  The pattern     oa   will ignore all files in the repository ending in  o or  a  object and archive files   If a pattern has a directory ending with a slash git will only match this directory and paths underneath it  This excludes regular files and symbolic links from the match   A leading slash will match all files in that path name    Ex  The pattern    c will match the file foo c but not bar awesome c    Great Example from the gitignore 5  man page     git status         Untracked files                Documentation foo html         Documentation gitignore html         file o         lib a         src internal o         cat  git info exclude     ignore objects and archives  anywhere in the tree       oa    cat Documentation  gitignore   ignore generated html files    html   except foo html which is maintained by hand  foo html   git status         Untracked files                Documentation foo html           Generally there are three different ways to ignore untracked files    1  Ignore for all users of the repository   Add a file named  gitignore to the root of your working copy   Edit  gitignore to match your preferences for which files should shouldn t be ignored   git add  gitignore    and commit when you re done     2  Ignore for only your copy of the repository   Add Edit the file  GIT DIR info exclude in your working copy  with your preferred patterns    Ex  My working copy is   src project1 so I would edit   src project1  git info exclude  You re done   3  Ignore in all situations  on your system    Global ignore patterns for your system can go in a file named what ever you wish    Mine personally is called    gitglobalignore   I can then let git know of this file by editing my    gitconfig file with the following line   core excludesfile      gitglobalignore   You re done   I find the gitignore man page to be the best resource for more information

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How do I delete a branch on a remote repository?

Perform a push in your remote using : before the name of the branch

git push origin :mybranchname

being origin the name of your remote and mybranchname the name of the branch about to be deleted

http://help.github.com/remotes/

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Gity  http   macendeavor com gity

[git] Git for beginners: The definitive practical guide

How do I delete a branch on a remote repository?

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