Dev tools / Git

How to start using Git

2025-12-27
Written by

Introduction

First and foremost, you need to understand the concept of Git. What it is, its purpose, and how it functions. Without delving into technical details. For instance, the Fundamental Concepts | NUS Hackers Wiki or What is Git? Our beginner’s guide to version control | The GitHub Blog articles appear intriguing.

Feel free to find another one if you’d like:

Initialization

If you’re starting with a directory that doesn’t have Git initialized, run the command to initialize Git:

git init

After that step, when running:

git status

…you’ll find successful information similar to this:

On branch main

No commits yet

nothing to commit (create/copy files and use "git add" to track)

Cloning

Another starting point is cloning a Git repository. Of course, such a repository should already exist and be created by someone.

Cloning is an operation that downloads the repository to your local machine from a remote server. You can perform this operation by running the command git clone <repository-url>. For example, to clone my repository https://github.com/kniziol/dotfiles from GitHub, you would use the following command:

git clone git@github.com:kniziol/dotfiles.git

An example of successful output:

Cloning into 'dotfiles'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 256, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (112/112), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (86/86), done.
remote: Total 256 (delta 56), reused 56 (delta 26), pack-reused 144 (from 2)
Receiving objects: 100% (256/256), 447.06 KiB | 1.20 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (131/131), done.

Now, you can visit the dotfiles directory and view its contents, which are identical to those found at https://github.com/kniziol/dotfiles on GitHub:

ls -alh dotfiles

Status

To view the current state of your local repository, including modified files and branch name, run the following command:

git status

Logs

To view commits and the history of changes made, run the git log command:

git log

or one of its variations that provides more detailed information:

git log --stat
git log --oneline

Create a new branch

To create a new branch run the git branch <new-branch-name> command:

git branch feature/test1

However, a faster method is to create a new branch and switch to it by running the git checkout -b <new-branch-name> command:

git checkout -b feature/test1

Make a change and create a Commit

Create an empty text file:

touch first-text-file.txt

Now edit that file in your favorite text editor, and add some text to it:

vim first-text-file.txt

Verify current status:

git status

An example of successful output:

On branch feature/test1

No commits yet

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

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

The newly created file, first-text-file.txt, is shown in the „Untracked files” section. Therefore, let’s add the file to the staging area:

git add first-text-file.txt

See the current status:

On branch feature/test1

No commits yet

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

You’re now ready to create a commit that includes all the changes you’ve made and staged. Let’s create a commit:

git commit -m "Create a first text file"

Oops, you need to specify commits author:

Author identity unknown

*** Please tell me who you are.

Run

  git config --global user.email "you@example.com"
  git config --global user.name "Your Name"

to set your account's default identity.
Omit --global to set the identity only in this repository.

Let’s set the author’s name and email address, specifically for this repository:

git config user.email "kn@localhost"
git config user.name "Krzysztof Nizioł"

Let’s create a commit now:

git commit -m "Create a first text file"

[feature/test1 02167bd] Create a first text file
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 first-text-file.txt

You can easily where your commit is by running the git log command:

git log

An example of successful output:

commit 02167bd3f0cf1e926e83c0362874994c777159f6 (HEAD -> feature/test1)
Author: Krzysztof Nizioł <kn@localhost>
Date:   Sat Dec 27 18:29:41 2025 +0100

    Create a first text file

Merge branches

Let’s consider a scenario where you’ve completed all the necessary changes and want to share them with others. In such a case, we need to merge our branch into the main branch, which is the common, root branch. To do that, use the git merge <branch> command.

First, let’s switch to the main branch:

git switch main

Next, merge the feature/test1 branch into the main branch:

git merge feature/test1

Other commands

  • git pull: updates your current local working branch with all new commits from the corresponding remote branch
  • git push: uploads all local branch commits to the remote branch
  • git remote -v: displays the associated remote repositories and their stored name

Useful resources

Here are some other interesting sources of information about Git:

Further Reading...

I love dotfiles!

2024-05-05