NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | IMPORTING A NEW PROJECT | MAKING CHANGES | GIT TRACKS CONTENT NOT FILES | VIEWING PROJECT HISTORY | MANAGING BRANCHES | USING GIT FOR COLLABORATION | EXPLORING HISTORY | NEXT STEPS | SEE ALSO | GIT | NOTES | COLOPHON

GITTUTORIAL(7)                   Git Manual                   GITTUTORIAL(7)

NAME         top

       gittutorial - A tutorial introduction to Git

SYNOPSIS         top

       git *

DESCRIPTION         top

       This tutorial explains how to import a new project into Git, make
       changes to it, and share changes with other developers.
       If you are instead primarily interested in using Git to fetch a
       project, for example, to test the latest version, you may prefer to
       start with the first two chapters of The Git User’s Manual[1].
       First, note that you can get documentation for a command such as git
       log --graph with:
           $ man git-log
       or:
           $ git help log
       With the latter, you can use the manual viewer of your choice; see
       git-help(1) for more information.
       It is a good idea to introduce yourself to Git with your name and
       public email address before doing any operation. The easiest way to
       do so is:
           $ git config --global user.name "Your Name Comes Here"
           $ git config --global user.email you@yourdomain.example.com

IMPORTING A NEW PROJECT         top

       Assume you have a tarball project.tar.gz with your initial work. You
       can place it under Git revision control as follows.
           $ tar xzf project.tar.gz
           $ cd project
           $ git init
       Git will reply
           Initialized empty Git repository in .git/
       You’ve now initialized the working directory—you may notice a new
       directory created, named ".git".
       Next, tell Git to take a snapshot of the contents of all files under
       the current directory (note the .), with git add:
           $ git add .
       This snapshot is now stored in a temporary staging area which Git
       calls the "index". You can permanently store the contents of the
       index in the repository with git commit:
           $ git commit
       This will prompt you for a commit message. You’ve now stored the
       first version of your project in Git.

MAKING CHANGES         top

       Modify some files, then add their updated contents to the index:
           $ git add file1 file2 file3
       You are now ready to commit. You can see what is about to be
       committed using git diff with the --cached option:
           $ git diff --cached
       (Without --cached, git diff will show you any changes that you’ve
       made but not yet added to the index.) You can also get a brief
       summary of the situation with git status:
           $ git status
           On branch master
           Changes to be committed:
           Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.
             (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
                   modified:   file1
                   modified:   file2
                   modified:   file3
       If you need to make any further adjustments, do so now, and then add
       any newly modified content to the index. Finally, commit your changes
       with:
           $ git commit
       This will again prompt you for a message describing the change, and
       then record a new version of the project.
       Alternatively, instead of running git add beforehand, you can use
           $ git commit -a
       which will automatically notice any modified (but not new) files, add
       them to the index, and commit, all in one step.
       A note on commit messages: Though not required, it’s a good idea to
       begin the commit message with a single short (less than 50 character)
       line summarizing the change, followed by a blank line and then a more
       thorough description. The text up to the first blank line in a commit
       message is treated as the commit title, and that title is used
       throughout Git. For example, git-format-patch(1) turns a commit into
       email, and it uses the title on the Subject line and the rest of the
       commit in the body.

GIT TRACKS CONTENT NOT FILES         top

       Many revision control systems provide an add command that tells the
       system to start tracking changes to a new file. Git’s add command
       does something simpler and more powerful: git add is used both for
       new and newly modified files, and in both cases it takes a snapshot
       of the given files and stages that content in the index, ready for
       inclusion in the next commit.

VIEWING PROJECT HISTORY         top

       At any point you can view the history of your changes using
           $ git log
       If you also want to see complete diffs at each step, use
           $ git log -p
       Often the overview of the change is useful to get a feel of each step
           $ git log --stat --summary

MANAGING BRANCHES         top

       A single Git repository can maintain multiple branches of
       development. To create a new branch named "experimental", use
           $ git branch experimental
       If you now run
           $ git branch
       you’ll get a list of all existing branches:
             experimental
           * master
       The "experimental" branch is the one you just created, and the
       "master" branch is a default branch that was created for you
       automatically. The asterisk marks the branch you are currently on;
       type
           $ git checkout experimental
       to switch to the experimental branch. Now edit a file, commit the
       change, and switch back to the master branch:
           (edit file)
           $ git commit -a
           $ git checkout master
       Check that the change you made is no longer visible, since it was
       made on the experimental branch and you’re back on the master branch.
       You can make a different change on the master branch:
           (edit file)
           $ git commit -a
       at this point the two branches have diverged, with different changes
       made in each. To merge the changes made in experimental into master,
       run
           $ git merge experimental
       If the changes don’t conflict, you’re done. If there are conflicts,
       markers will be left in the problematic files showing the conflict;
           $ git diff
       will show this. Once you’ve edited the files to resolve the
       conflicts,
           $ git commit -a
       will commit the result of the merge. Finally,
           $ gitk
       will show a nice graphical representation of the resulting history.
       At this point you could delete the experimental branch with
           $ git branch -d experimental
       This command ensures that the changes in the experimental branch are
       already in the current branch.
       If you develop on a branch crazy-idea, then regret it, you can always
       delete the branch with
           $ git branch -D crazy-idea
       Branches are cheap and easy, so this is a good way to try something
       out.

USING GIT FOR COLLABORATION         top

       Suppose that Alice has started a new project with a Git repository in
       /home/alice/project, and that Bob, who has a home directory on the
       same machine, wants to contribute.
       Bob begins with:
           bob$ git clone /home/alice/project myrepo
       This creates a new directory "myrepo" containing a clone of Alice’s
       repository. The clone is on an equal footing with the original
       project, possessing its own copy of the original project’s history.
       Bob then makes some changes and commits them:
           (edit files)
           bob$ git commit -a
           (repeat as necessary)
       When he’s ready, he tells Alice to pull changes from the repository
       at /home/bob/myrepo. She does this with:
           alice$ cd /home/alice/project
           alice$ git pull /home/bob/myrepo master
       This merges the changes from Bob’s "master" branch into Alice’s
       current branch. If Alice has made her own changes in the meantime,
       then she may need to manually fix any conflicts.
       The "pull" command thus performs two operations: it fetches changes
       from a remote branch, then merges them into the current branch.
       Note that in general, Alice would want her local changes committed
       before initiating this "pull". If Bob’s work conflicts with what
       Alice did since their histories forked, Alice will use her working
       tree and the index to resolve conflicts, and existing local changes
       will interfere with the conflict resolution process (Git will still
       perform the fetch but will refuse to merge --- Alice will have to get
       rid of her local changes in some way and pull again when this
       happens).
       Alice can peek at what Bob did without merging first, using the
       "fetch" command; this allows Alice to inspect what Bob did, using a
       special symbol "FETCH_HEAD", in order to determine if he has anything
       worth pulling, like this:
           alice$ git fetch /home/bob/myrepo master
           alice$ git log -p HEAD..FETCH_HEAD
       This operation is safe even if Alice has uncommitted local changes.
       The range notation "HEAD..FETCH_HEAD" means "show everything that is
       reachable from the FETCH_HEAD but exclude anything that is reachable
       from HEAD". Alice already knows everything that leads to her current
       state (HEAD), and reviews what Bob has in his state (FETCH_HEAD) that
       she has not seen with this command.
       If Alice wants to visualize what Bob did since their histories forked
       she can issue the following command:
           $ gitk HEAD..FETCH_HEAD
       This uses the same two-dot range notation we saw earlier with git
       log.
       Alice may want to view what both of them did since they forked. She
       can use three-dot form instead of the two-dot form:
           $ gitk HEAD...FETCH_HEAD
       This means "show everything that is reachable from either one, but
       exclude anything that is reachable from both of them".
       Please note that these range notation can be used with both gitk and
       "git log".
       After inspecting what Bob did, if there is nothing urgent, Alice may
       decide to continue working without pulling from Bob. If Bob’s history
       does have something Alice would immediately need, Alice may choose to
       stash her work-in-progress first, do a "pull", and then finally
       unstash her work-in-progress on top of the resulting history.
       When you are working in a small closely knit group, it is not unusual
       to interact with the same repository over and over again. By defining
       remote repository shorthand, you can make it easier:
           alice$ git remote add bob /home/bob/myrepo
       With this, Alice can perform the first part of the "pull" operation
       alone using the git fetch command without merging them with her own
       branch, using:
           alice$ git fetch bob
       Unlike the longhand form, when Alice fetches from Bob using a remote
       repository shorthand set up with git remote, what was fetched is
       stored in a remote-tracking branch, in this case bob/master. So after
       this:
           alice$ git log -p master..bob/master
       shows a list of all the changes that Bob made since he branched from
       Alice’s master branch.
       After examining those changes, Alice could merge the changes into her
       master branch:
           alice$ git merge bob/master
       This merge can also be done by pulling from her own remote-tracking
       branch, like this:
           alice$ git pull . remotes/bob/master
       Note that git pull always merges into the current branch, regardless
       of what else is given on the command line.
       Later, Bob can update his repo with Alice’s latest changes using
           bob$ git pull
       Note that he doesn’t need to give the path to Alice’s repository;
       when Bob cloned Alice’s repository, Git stored the location of her
       repository in the repository configuration, and that location is used
       for pulls:
           bob$ git config --get remote.origin.url
           /home/alice/project
       (The complete configuration created by git clone is visible using git
       config -l, and the git-config(1) man page explains the meaning of
       each option.)
       Git also keeps a pristine copy of Alice’s master branch under the
       name "origin/master":
           bob$ git branch -r
             origin/master
       If Bob later decides to work from a different host, he can still
       perform clones and pulls using the ssh protocol:
           bob$ git clone alice.org:/home/alice/project myrepo
       Alternatively, Git has a native protocol, or can use http; see
       git-pull(1) for details.
       Git can also be used in a CVS-like mode, with a central repository
       that various users push changes to; see git-push(1) and
       gitcvs-migration(7).

EXPLORING HISTORY         top

       Git history is represented as a series of interrelated commits. We
       have already seen that the git log command can list those commits.
       Note that first line of each git log entry also gives a name for the
       commit:
           $ git log
           commit c82a22c39cbc32576f64f5c6b3f24b99ea8149c7
           Author: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
           Date:   Tue May 16 17:18:22 2006 -0700
               merge-base: Clarify the comments on post processing.
       We can give this name to git show to see the details about this
       commit.
           $ git show c82a22c39cbc32576f64f5c6b3f24b99ea8149c7
       But there are other ways to refer to commits. You can use any initial
       part of the name that is long enough to uniquely identify the commit:
           $ git show c82a22c39c   # the first few characters of the name are
                                   # usually enough
           $ git show HEAD         # the tip of the current branch
           $ git show experimental # the tip of the "experimental" branch
       Every commit usually has one "parent" commit which points to the
       previous state of the project:
           $ git show HEAD^  # to see the parent of HEAD
           $ git show HEAD^^ # to see the grandparent of HEAD
           $ git show HEAD~4 # to see the great-great grandparent of HEAD
       Note that merge commits may have more than one parent:
           $ git show HEAD^1 # show the first parent of HEAD (same as HEAD^)
           $ git show HEAD^2 # show the second parent of HEAD
       You can also give commits names of your own; after running
           $ git tag v2.5 1b2e1d63ff
       you can refer to 1b2e1d63ff by the name "v2.5". If you intend to
       share this name with other people (for example, to identify a release
       version), you should create a "tag" object, and perhaps sign it; see
       git-tag(1) for details.
       Any Git command that needs to know a commit can take any of these
       names. For example:
           $ git diff v2.5 HEAD     # compare the current HEAD to v2.5
           $ git branch stable v2.5 # start a new branch named "stable" based
                                    # at v2.5
           $ git reset --hard HEAD^ # reset your current branch and working
                                    # directory to its state at HEAD^
       Be careful with that last command: in addition to losing any changes
       in the working directory, it will also remove all later commits from
       this branch. If this branch is the only branch containing those
       commits, they will be lost. Also, don’t use git reset on a
       publicly-visible branch that other developers pull from, as it will
       force needless merges on other developers to clean up the history. If
       you need to undo changes that you have pushed, use git revert
       instead.
       The git grep command can search for strings in any version of your
       project, so
           $ git grep "hello" v2.5
       searches for all occurrences of "hello" in v2.5.
       If you leave out the commit name, git grep will search any of the
       files it manages in your current directory. So
           $ git grep "hello"
       is a quick way to search just the files that are tracked by Git.
       Many Git commands also take sets of commits, which can be specified
       in a number of ways. Here are some examples with git log:
           $ git log v2.5..v2.6            # commits between v2.5 and v2.6
           $ git log v2.5..                # commits since v2.5
           $ git log --since="2 weeks ago" # commits from the last 2 weeks
           $ git log v2.5.. Makefile       # commits since v2.5 which modify
                                           # Makefile
       You can also give git log a "range" of commits where the first is not
       necessarily an ancestor of the second; for example, if the tips of
       the branches "stable" and "master" diverged from a common commit some
       time ago, then
           $ git log stable..master
       will list commits made in the master branch but not in the stable
       branch, while
           $ git log master..stable
       will show the list of commits made on the stable branch but not the
       master branch.
       The git log command has a weakness: it must present commits in a
       list. When the history has lines of development that diverged and
       then merged back together, the order in which git log presents those
       commits is meaningless.
       Most projects with multiple contributors (such as the Linux kernel,
       or Git itself) have frequent merges, and gitk does a better job of
       visualizing their history. For example,
           $ gitk --since="2 weeks ago" drivers/
       allows you to browse any commits from the last 2 weeks of commits
       that modified files under the "drivers" directory. (Note: you can
       adjust gitk’s fonts by holding down the control key while pressing
       "-" or "+".)
       Finally, most commands that take filenames will optionally allow you
       to precede any filename by a commit, to specify a particular version
       of the file:
           $ git diff v2.5:Makefile HEAD:Makefile.in
       You can also use git show to see any such file:
           $ git show v2.5:Makefile

NEXT STEPS         top

       This tutorial should be enough to perform basic distributed revision
       control for your projects. However, to fully understand the depth and
       power of Git you need to understand two simple ideas on which it is
       based:
       ·   The object database is the rather elegant system used to store
           the history of your project—files, directories, and commits.
       ·   The index file is a cache of the state of a directory tree, used
           to create commits, check out working directories, and hold the
           various trees involved in a merge.
       Part two of this tutorial explains the object database, the index
       file, and a few other odds and ends that you’ll need to make the most
       of Git. You can find it at gittutorial-2(7).
       If you don’t want to continue with that right away, a few other
       digressions that may be interesting at this point are:
       ·   git-format-patch(1), git-am(1): These convert series of git
           commits into emailed patches, and vice versa, useful for projects
           such as the Linux kernel which rely heavily on emailed patches.
       ·   git-bisect(1): When there is a regression in your project, one
           way to track down the bug is by searching through the history to
           find the exact commit that’s to blame. Git bisect can help you
           perform a binary search for that commit. It is smart enough to
           perform a close-to-optimal search even in the case of complex
           non-linear history with lots of merged branches.
       ·   gitworkflows(7): Gives an overview of recommended workflows.
       ·   giteveryday(7): Everyday Git with 20 Commands Or So.
       ·   gitcvs-migration(7): Git for CVS users.

SEE ALSO         top

       gittutorial-2(7), gitcvs-migration(7), gitcore-tutorial(7),
       gitglossary(7), git-help(1), gitworkflows(7), giteveryday(7), The Git
       User’s Manual[1]

GIT         top

       Part of the git(1) suite

NOTES         top

        1. The Git User’s Manual
           file:///usr/local/share/doc/git/user-manual.html

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control system)
       project.  Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual page,
       see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩.  This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository ⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on
       2017-07-05.  If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML ver‐
       sion of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date
       source for the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
       information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original man‐
       ual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org
Git 2.12.0.rc2                   02/18/2017                   GITTUTORIAL(7)

Pages that refer to this page: git(1)gitcore-tutorial(7)gitcvs-migration(7)gitglossary(7)gittutorial-2(7)gitworkflows(7)