Your First Git Repo

Its time to git with it

I am sure for most of you this is not your first git repo, but to make sure that no one is confused, lets spend 5 minutes going over the basic commands of a git repo.

Draw Git

(use excalidraw)

Configuring your git experience

Before we begin, we need to configure git to contain your information. Every commit comes with the author's name and email. So to ensure you get proper credit and/or blame for all the wonderful code you add, we need to set our name and email!

git config

Git comes with a config that is global, for all projects, and local, project level. There are other git config levels, but they are irrelevant for the average git experience. project level config overrides global level config as its more specific.

This would be akin to javascript's Object.assign

const config = Object.assign({}, globalConfig, localConfig);

Key Facts

All git config keys are in the following shape: <section>.<key>.
--global flag will ensure you set this key value for all future uses of git and repos
user.name and user.email are the key's used in creating a commit tied to you
to add a key value, execute git config --add --global <key> "<value>"
you can view any value of git config by executing git config --get <key>

Problem

Add your user.name and user.email IF you don't already have values for them.

Solution

Lets pretend that when i execute:

➜  git config --get user.name
➜

I get nothing out, therefore i need to add both my user.name and user.email

git config --add --global user.name "ThePrimeagen"
git config --add --global user.email "the.primeagen@aol.com"

Creating A New Repo

The very first step of any project is to create a repo. To create a repo we use git init. There are some options to creating repos but they are out of the scope of this and largely will never be used in your entire career

To create a new git repo you first have to create a new directory or use an existing one with no version control.

Once inside the directory type git init and it will create a .git folder

Problem

Create a new git repo at /path/to/new/my-first-git-repo. Replace /path/to/new to your preferred project location.

If you know what you are doing and have done this before i encourage you to follow along, we will be doing some exercises in this repo

Solution

The higher level steps are:

cd to /path/to/new
mkdir a new directory my-first-git-repo
cd into the new directory
call git init

Terminal commands:

cd /path/to/new
mkdir my-first-git-repo
cd my-first-git-repo

git init

Note

If you have an unconfigured git default branch you may see the following notice

➜  my-first-git git init
hint: Using 'master' as the name for the initial branch. This default branch name
hint: is subject to change. To configure the initial branch name to use in all
hint: of your new repositories, which will suppress this warning, call:
hint:
hint:   git config --global init.defaultBranch <name>
hint:
hint: Names commonly chosen instead of 'master' are 'main', 'trunk' and
hint: 'development'. The just-created branch can be renamed via this command:
hint:
hint:   git branch -m <name>
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/ThePrimeagen/personal/my-first-git/.git/

We will address config more holistically later on.

The Files Are IN the Git Repo

Every git repo comes with a directory that contains all of the state of the git repo. This repo is found in .git

Problem

Validate that you have created a new git repo by listing out the files and directories in the git state directory.

Solution

➜  my-first-git git:(master) find .git
.git
.git/info
.git/info/exclude
.git/HEAD
.git/branches
.git/description
.git/refs
.git/refs/tags
.git/refs/heads
.git/objects
.git/objects/info
.git/objects/pack
.git/config
.git/hooks
.git/hooks/pre-rebase.sample
.git/hooks/prepare-commit-msg.sample
.git/hooks/post-update.sample
.git/hooks/commit-msg.sample
.git/hooks/pre-commit.sample
.git/hooks/pre-applypatch.sample
.git/hooks/pre-merge-commit.sample
.git/hooks/applypatch-msg.sample
.git/hooks/pre-push.sample
.git/hooks/push-to-checkout.sample
.git/hooks/fsmonitor-watchman.sample
.git/hooks/update.sample
.git/hooks/pre-receive.sample

You may not like this, but this is peak empty git repo with all the files and sample code needed to get your config up and running

Note

Git keeps its state by using a series of files and directories. We will go into more detail shortly

The Basics

The next couple commands will be 80% of the commands you will execute when using git. 80% of git is exceptionally easy. Its the 20% that can get you into trouble :7

git add <path-to-file | pattern> will add zero or more files to the index (staging area)
git commit -m '<message>' will commit what changes are present in the index.
git status will describe the state of your git repo which will include tracked, staged, and untracked changes.

Problem

We want to trace the steps of git from untracked to tracked.

Command reminder

git add <path-to-file | pattern>
git commit -m '<message>'
git status

create a file first.md
check the status of git to see that its untracked.
add first.md to the staging area
check the status of git to see that its now tracked in the staging area
commit with a friendly message
check the status of git to see there are no changes pending or untracked

Solution

1. Create a new file

vim first.md # or whatever editor you would like to use

add a simple change

2. Check the status

git status

You should see something similar to the following. Noticed that we only have untracked files. Meaning our git repo has no information on first.md

➜  my-first-git git:(master) git status
On branch master

No commits yet

Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
        first.md

nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)

3. stage first.md

git add first.md

With add you can use any glob to add files. Be careful, you may end up adding files you do not want to. This will require you to unstage them before committing.

4. validate the file is now staged

➜  my-first-git git:(master) git status
On branch master

No commits yet

Changes to be committed:
  (use "git rm --cached <file>..." to unstage)
        new file:   first.md

5. commit

git commit -m 'my first commit'
[master (root-commit) 33d6d96] my first commit
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 first.md

git status
On branch master
nothing to commit, working tree clean

We have officially created our first commit! Congrats if this is your first time.

What Changes Are In A Repo

A common activity of the 20% is to see what the past changes are within a repo. We will dive deeper into this operation later, but for now, lets scratch the surface.

git log has many options to make viewing of history a pleasant experience.

Review or Explore

Review man git-log and search for --graph and --decorate. Quickly find and read the description of each option

Problem

Display the history of this repo with the --graph and --decorate option.

Solution

git log --graph --decorate

* commit 33d6d9645ac045c6d99eba9d6706d0d48421e582 (HEAD -> master)
  Author: ThePrimeagen <the.primeagen@gmail.com>
  Date:   Sun Jan 21 10:52:45 2024 -0700

      my first commit

The decorate option, if you didn't understand from description, means that it puts branches / HEAD in the commit logs so you can see in a friendly way where your branches are pointed at.

If you don't know what a branch is, that is ok, we will get there.

Unfortunately we only have one commit, therefore our --graph option is less impressive. Don't worry we will make extensive use. What does show up is the * showing the graph has only one node in the output

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