Version Control with Git

Creating a Repository

Once Git is configured, we can start using it. Let’s create a directory for our work and then move into that directory:

$ mkdir planets
$ cd planets

Then we tell Git to make planets-yourName a repository—a place where Git can store versions of our files:

$ git init

If we use ls to show the directory’s contents, it appears that nothing has changed:

$ ls

But if we add the -a flag to show everything, we can see that Git has created a hidden directory within planets called .git:

$ ls -a

.   ..  .git

Git stores information about the project in this special sub-directory. If we ever delete it, we will lose the project’s history. This is a useful thing to remember- if we mess up with git init, we can actually delete anything related to the repository and give ourselves a clean slate, simply by deleting the .git folder.

We can check that everything is set up correctly by asking Git to tell us the status of our project:

$ git status

# On branch master
#
# Initial commit
#
nothing to commit (create/copy files and use "git add" to track)

cd             # return to home directory
mkdir planets  # make a new directory planets
cd planets     # go into planets
git init       # make the planets directory a Git repository
mkdir moons    # make a sub-directory planets/moons
cd moons       # go into planets/moons
git init       # make the moons sub-directory a Git repository