A Short guide to get started with “Git” Version Control System

Git is the most famous version control system, a version control system is used to make teams collaborate over a  software project and keep track of all the versions of it.

In this guide we will discuss some basic commands to get started with git version control system in debian based Linux operating system. 

Command to install git:

sudo apt-get install git

Checking git version:

git --version

Setting global variables:

git config --global user.name "YOUR USER NAME"

git config --global user.email "YOUR E-MAIL"

These global configuration settings are important as these settings will be used when any operations would be done with git command.

Now everytime you push changes to your git repository you will be asked to put username and password. To avoid this we can use below command to make Git remember your credentials after your first input. 

git config --global credential.helper cache

With above command Git will keep your credentials cached in your machine until you want it to be.

To make Git save your credentials for a specific time period you can edit above command and add ‘–timeout’ with time period in seconds.

git config --global credential.helper 'cache --timeout 3600' 

This command will make Git save your credentials for 3600 seconds ( 1 hour ).  After that, with every push, you have to type your credentials manually.

Sometimes, we use shared computer this can make using above command a security issue as it saves the credentials in plain text in your system. Hence, to delete the saved credentials and to stop the caching we can use the following command.

git credential-cache exit 

Above command will delete your credentials and will make Git not to cache your credentials when you input them next time.

Git can be used locally unless you are pushing your changes to the remote repository. 

To initialize the directory with Git we can use the following command:

git init DIRECTORY-PATH

If you are already in the working directory you can just use the following command:

git init

You can also create working directory with git init command as follows:

git init NEW-WORKING-DIRECTORY

Command to add files to the staging area:

git add CHANGED-FILE

If you have changed a lot of files and want to add them to the staging area all at once. You can use:

git add * 

Here ‘*’ denotes all the files.

Git ‘add’ will put all the changed files in the staging area. Staged files are ready to get committed. 

Difference between ‘git add‘ and ‘git commit‘ is that effects of ‘git add‘ commands are not logged while ‘git commit‘ effects are logged with their own SHA-1 hash identifier.

You can check the Git log with the help of following command:

git log

Now to push changes to the remote repository we can use following command:

git push origin master 

If above command gives following result then it means your origin repository is not set.

fatal: 'origin' does not appear to be a git repository
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

To make this error go away we have to set the remote origin where the push can be made. Command for that:

git remote add origin  https://github.com/YOUR-GITHUB-USERNAME/REPOSITORY-NAME.git

You can check your remote repository with the following command:

git remote -v

If your remote git repository is set, this command should output it. If it is not set then it will output nothing.