HTML/CSS/JS - Git & GitHub
16 Feb 2016Git is a source code management tool used to keep track of changes to files in a project. Git is freely available as a download for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. Once installed, the git commands used are identical across all three platforms.
If for some reason you are unable to download and install Git on your PC or laptop (for example, it’s a work laptop), you can use an online IDE which has Git support built-in, such as Cloud9. Again, the git commands we will discuss here will be identical.
Starting with a local repository
git init
- done only once per project, from the root folder of the project
git add --all
- adds tracking for all files changes, i.e. adding new files as well as removing exisiting ones
git commit -m "some descriptive comment"
- commits (to the repo) any changes made to the files being tracked
git status
- shows current status; especially useful to see if any changes have been made but have not yet been committed
git log
- shows a history of all commits; note each commit has a unique id. (SHA)
git checkout
- recover a previous version of a file from the repo; e.g. deleted a file by mistake / deleted contents of file / made incorrect modifications
- use
git logto figure out which commit (date, time) you wish to go back to; note SHA git checkout [SHA] [filename]gets an earlier committed version of that file
Working with a remote repo on GitHub
We can just have a local repository and be able to keep track of all changes there, and leave it at that.
Sometimes, however, we need to go a step further and store our files in a remote repository. For example, for extra backup in case something happens to your laptop, or as a way to publicly showcase a project and make the code available to others for collaboration. This is where something like GitHub comes in.
Once you register on GitHub, you get an unlimited number of public repositories. ‘Public’ means anyone can see your files and copy them, but no one can change them directly.
The steps to set up, and use, a remote repo on GitHub are:
- create repo on GitHub
- copy the repo URL, normally HTTPS
git remote add [name e.g. origin] [paste repo URL from GitHub]done only once to let local Git installation know about remote repositorygit push -u origin masterto push changes upstream to remote repo (origin) from local branch (master); will prompt for GitHub username and password
To summarise, once local and remote repositories are set up, the only three commands you will really use most of the time are:
git add --all
git commit -m "some descriptive comment"
git push -u origin master