Fr

Who this book is written for

If you are a software developer with little or no experience
of versioning systems, or are familiar with other centralized
versioning systems, then this book is for you. If you have
some experience working with command lines or using
Linux admin or just using Unix and want to know more about
Git, then this book is ideal for you.

What you will learn from this book

P U B L I S H I N G

pl

Transport your work to a remote repository

working in a centralized manner
Organize your source code using feature
branches
Organize the development flow
Get a meaningful changelog using clear
commit messages
Collaborate with teammates without any
impediments
Experiment with your code without affecting
functional code files
Explore some tools used to migrate to Git
from other versioning systems without losing
your development history
Extend your knowledge of Git with some
useful resources

$ 24.99 US
16.99 UK

community experience distilled

Sa
m

Create, branch, and merge a local repository

Prices do not include

local sales tax or VAT
where applicable

Visit www.PacktPub.com for books, eBooks,

code, downloads, and PacktLib.

C o m m u n i t y

Ferdinando Santacroce

Since its inception, Git has attracted skilled developers due

to its robust, powerful, and reliable features. Its incredibly fast
branching ability transformed a piece of code from a niche
tool for former Linux Kernel developers into a mainstream
distributed versioning system. Like most powerful tools, Git
can be hard to approach since it has a lot of commands,
subcommands, and options that easily confuse newcomers.
The main purpose of Git Essentials is to help you overcome
this fear and become adept at all basic tasks in Git. This
book starts with an introduction to version control systems,
and after this you'll delve deeply into the essentials of Git.
This serves as a primer for the topics to follow such as
branching and merging, creating and managing a GitHub
personal repository, and fork and pull requests. You will then
learn the art of cherry-picking, taking only commits you like,
followed by Git blame. Finally, you'll learn how to migrate
from SVN using Git tools or TortoiseGit and migrate from
other VCSs, concluding with a collection of resources, links,
and appendices.

Git Essentials

Git Essentials

ee

E x p e r i e n c e

D i s t i l l e d

Git Essentials
Create, merge, and distribute code with Git, the most powerful
and flexible versioning system available
Forewords by Arialdo Martini, Solutions Architect at Aduno Gruppe
Nicola Paolucci, Developer Advocate at Atlassian
Dr. Andr Roberge, Former President and Vice-Chancellor
of Universit Sainte-Anne

Ferdinando Santacroce

In this package, you will find:

The author biography

A preview chapter from the book, Chapter 1 'Getting Started with Git'
A synopsis of the books content
More information on Git Essentials

About the Author

Ferdinando Santacroce is a developer, author, and teacher who loves learning
new things.
As a software developer, Ferdinando mainly works on the .NET platform using C#,
which bridges the gaps between oldstyle systems and new technologies. Over the
span of his career, he has allowed COBOL applications to talk with remote services,
databases, and electronic devices, such as cash handlers, scanners, and electronic shelf
labels. At the moment, he's focusing on continuously improving the Agile Movement,
which he follows with great care, in conjunction with XP foundations and lean
manufacturing.
While working as a teacher, he developed the first web-based school register in a
school of his district, which allowed parents to take a look at grades and absences on
a regular basis.
Ferdinando loves to teach people, everyone from children to grandpas, and introduces
them to the use of computers, the Internet, and new mobile devices.
He enjoys writing too; after a hiatus of a few years, he started blogging again about
his work and passions, which, according to him, is more or less the same thing.
Most of what he's learned over the years has been with the help of his friends and
colleagues. This has encouraged him to read books and attend inspiring conferences,
such as XP Conference, Italian Agile Day, Codemotion, and others, that help his
growth by working on the same code with him.

Git Essentials
If you are reading this book, you are probably a software developer and a professional.
What makes a good professional? Sure, culture and experience are a part of the answer,
but there's more: a good professional is one who can master different tools, choose the
best tool for the job at hand, and has the necessary discipline to develop good
working habits.
Version control is one of the base skills for developers and Git is one of the right tools
for the job. However, Git can't be compared to a screwdriver, a simple tool with only a
basic function; Git provides a complete toolbox that can help you manage your own
code, within which there are also other sharp tools that should be handled with caution.
The final aim of this book is to help you to start using Git and its commands in the safest
way possible, to get things done without causing any injuries. Having said this, you will
not get the most from Git commands if you do not acquire the right habits; just as is the
case with other tools, in the end, it is the craftsman who makes all the difference.
This book will cover all the basic topics of Git, thereby letting you start using it even if
you have little or no experience with versioning systems; you only need to know about
versioning in general and the Wikipedia-related page is enough for this purpose.

What This Book Covers

Chapter 1, Getting Started with Git shows you all the (simple) steps you need in order
to install Git and do your first commit.
Chapter 2, Git Fundamentals Working Locally reveals the essence of Git, how it
takes care of your fi les, and how you can manage and organize your code.
Chapter 3, Git Fundamentals Working Remotely moves your attention to the
collaborating side of the tool, explaining the basic commands individually and the
options you use when working with remote repositories.
Chapter 4, Git Fundamentals Niche Concepts, Configurations, and Commands
completes the basic set of Git commands you need to know, giving you some more
weapons to use in difficult situations.

Chapter 5, Obtaining the Most Good Commits and Workflows gives you some hints
about common methods you can use to organize the source code within Git, thereby
helping you to develop good habits that every developer should possess.
Chapter 6, Migrating to Git is a way to give you a hand if you're used to other
versioning systems, such as Subversion, to manage the transitional phase from
another piece of software to Git.
Chapter 7, Git Resources offers you some hints, which I've taken from my experience,
and could prove interesting for you.

Getting Started with Git

Whether you are a professional or an amateur developer, you've likely heard about
the concept of version control. You may know that adding a new feature, fixing
broken ones, or stepping back to a previous condition is a daily routine.
This implies the use of a powerful tool that can help you take care of your work,
allowing you to move around your project quickly and without friction.
There are many tools for this job on the market, both proprietary and open source.
Usually, you will find Version Control Systems (VCS) and Distributed Version
Control Systems (DVCS). Some examples of centralized tools are Concurrent
Version System (CVS), Subversion (SVN), Team Foundation Server (TFS) and
Perforce, while in DVCS, you can find Bazaar, Mercurial, and Git. The main
difference between the two families is the constraintin the centralized systemto
have a remote server where get and put your files; if the network is down, you are in
trouble. In DVCS instead, you can have or not a remote server (even more than one),
but you can work offline, too. All your modifications are locally recorded so that you
can sync them some other time. Today, Git is the DVCS that has gained public favor
more than others, growing quickly from a niche tool to mainstream.
Git has rapidly grown as the de facto to version source code. It is the second famous
child of Linus Torvalds, who, after creating the Linux kernel, forged this versioning
software to keep trace of his millions lines of code.
In this first chapter, we will start at the very beginning, assuming that you do not
have Git on your machine. This book is intended for developers who never used Git
or used it a little bit, but who are scared to throw themselves headlong into it.
If you have never installed Git, this is your chapter. If you already have a working
Git box, you can quickly read through it to check whether everything is right.

[1]

Getting Started with Git

Installing Git
Git is open source software. If you are running a Windows machine, you can
download it for free from http://git-scm.com. At the time of writing this book,
the current version of Git is 1.9.5. If you are a Mac user, you can download it from
http://git-scm.com/downloads; here, you can find the *.dmg file, too. Finally,
if you are a Linux user, you probably have Git out of the box (if not, use the aptget install git command or equivalent). Here, I won't go into too much detail
about the installation process itself; I will only provide a few recommendations for
Windows users shown in the following screenshot:

Enabling Windows Explorer integration is generally useful; you will benefit

from a convenient way to open a Git prompt in any folder by right-clicking on
the contextual menu.
Let Git be used in classic DOS command prompt, too, as shown in the following
screenshot:

[2]

Chapter 1

Git is provided with an embedded Windows-compatible version of the famous Bash

shell from Linux, which we will use extensively. By doing this, we will also make Git
available to third-party applications, such as GUIs and so on. It will come in handy
when we give some GUI tools a try.

[3]

Getting Started with Git

Use defaults for line endings. This will protect you from future annoyances.
At the end of the process, we will have Git installed, and all its *nix friends will be
ready to use it.

Running our first Git command

Now, we have to test our installation. Is Git ready to rock? Let's find out!
Open a prompt and simply type git (or the equivalent, git --help), as shown in
the following screenshot:

[4]

Chapter 1

If Git has been installed correctly, typing git without specifying anything else will
result in a short help page, with a list of common commands. If not, try reinstalling
Git, ensuring that you have checked the Use Git from the Windows Command
Prompt option. Otherwise, Git will be available only within the embedded Bash shell.
So, we have Git up and running! Are you excited? Let's begin to type!

Setting up a new repository

The first step is to set up a new repository (or repo, for short). A repo is a container
for your entire project; every file or subfolder within it belongs to that repository,
in a consistent manner. Physically, a repository is nothing other than a folder that
contains a special .git folder, the folder where the magic happens.
Let's try to make our first repo. Choose a folder you like, and type the git init
command, as shown here:

Whoa! What just happened? Git created a .git subfolder. The subfolder (normally
hidden in Windows) contains some files and folders, as shown in the next screenshot:

At this point, it is not important for us to understand what is inside this folder. The
only thing you have to know is that you do not have to touch it, ever! If you delete it
or if you modify files inside by hand, you could get into trouble. Have I frightened
you enough?
[5]

Getting Started with Git

Now that we have a repo, we can start to put files inside it. Git can trace the history
of any gender of files, text based or binary, small or large, with the same efficiency
(more or less, large files are always a problem).

Adding a file
Let's create a text file just to give it a try.

And now what? Is that all? No! We have to tell Git to put this file in your repo,
explicitly. Git doesn't do anything that you don't want it to. If you have some spare
files or temp ones in your repo, Git will not be compatible with them, but will only
remind you that there are some files in your repo that are not under version control
(in the next chapter, we will see how to instruct Git to ignore them when necessary).
Ok, back to the topic. I want MyFile.txt under the control of Git, so let's add it, as
shown here:

The git add command tells Git that we want it to take care of that file and check it
for future modifications.
Has Git obeyed us? Let's see.

[6]

Chapter 1

Using the git status command, we can check the status of the repo, as shown in
the following screenshot:

As we can see, Git has accomplished its work as expected. In this image, we can read
words such as branch, master, commit and unstage. We will look at them briefly,
but for the moment, let's ignore them.

Commit the added file

At this point, Git knows about MyFile.txt, but we have to perform another step
to fix the snapshot of its content. We have to commit it using the appropriate git
commit command. This time, we will add some flavor to our command, using the
--message (or -m) subcommand, as shown here:

Press the Enter key.

[7]

Getting Started with Git

Feel the magica new branch is born!

With the commit of MyFile.txt, we have finally fired up our repo. It now has a
master branch with a file within it. We will play with branches in the forthcoming
chapters. Right now, think of it as a course of our repository, and keep in mind that a
repository can have multiple courses that often cross each other.

Modify a committed file

Now, we can try to make some modifications to the file and see how to deal with it in
the following screenshot:

As you can see, Bash shell warns us that there are some modifications painting the
name of the modified files in red. Here, the git status command informs us that
there is a file with some modifications and that we need to commit it if we want to
save this modification step in the repository history.
However, what does no changes added to commit mean? It is simple. Git makes
you take a second look at what you want to include in the next commit. If you have
touched two files but you want to commit only one, you can add only that one.
If you try to do a commit without skipping the add step, nothing will happen. We
will see this behavior in depth in the next chapter.

[8]

Chapter 1

So, let's add the file again for the purpose of getting things ready for the next commit.

Let's do another commit, this time, avoiding the --message subcommand. So, type
git commit and hit the Enter key.

Fasten your seatbelts! You are now entering into a piece of code history!

[9]

Getting Started with Git

What is that? It's Vim (Vi Improved), an ancient and powerful text editor. You can
configure Git to use your own preferred editor, but if you don't do it, this is what
you have to deal with. Vim is powerful, but for newcomers, it can be a pain to use.
It has a strange way of dealing with text, so to start typing, you have to press i for
inserting text, as shown in the following screenshot:

Once you have typed your commit message, you can press Esc to get out of the
editing mode. Then, you can type the :w command to write changes and the :q
command to quit. You can also type the command in pairs as :wq.

After that, press Enter and another commit is done, as shown here:

[ 10 ]

Chapter 1

Note that when you saved the commit message in Vim, Git automatically dispatches
the commit work, as you can see in the preceding screenshot.
Well done! Now, it's time to recap.

Summary
In this chapter, you learned that Git is not so difficult to install, even on a non-Unix
platform such as Windows.
Once you have chosen a directory to include in a Git repository, you can see that
initializing a new Git repository is as easy as executing a git init command, and
nothing more. Don't worry now about saving it on a remote server and so on. It's not
mandatory to save it; you can do this when you need to, preserving the entire history
of your repo. This is a killer feature of Git and DVCS in general. You can comfortably
work offline and push your work to a remote location when the network is available,
without hassle.
In the end, we discovered one of the most important character traits of Git: it will
do nothing if you don't mention it explicitly. You also learned a little bit about the
add command. We were obliged to perform a git add command for a file when we
committed it to Git the very first time. Then, we used another command when we
modified it. This is because if you modify a file, Git does not expect that you want it
to be automatically added to the next commit (and it's right, I'll say).
In the next chapter, we will discover some fundamentals of Git.

[ 11 ]

Get more information Git Essentials

Where to buy this book

You can buy Git Essentials from the Packt Publishing website.
Alternatively, you can buy the book from Amazon, BN.com, Computer Manuals and most internet
book retailers.
Click here for ordering and shipping details.

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