Create account and repository on github.com

Go to github.com and create an account. Once, account is created, create a repository in Repositories tab and click on the green button New. The following page opens.

NOTE: A repository is something like a project folder.

Copy repository URL

After a new repository is created, copy the clone url link. This link is used to clone the repository from server to the computer.

Set working directory

On Mac computers, open Terminal (on windows open Command Prompt aka cmd). I am not an expert on Terminal and it is almost like a black box to me at this point. But for purpose of using git, it is not difficult and we need to know only a few commands.

NOTE: To find Terminal on Mac, search spotlight OR go to Applications > Utilities > Terminal. To find Command Prompt on Windows, you can either find it in Accessories Folder in Start Menu, or find it in C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe

The following are important commands for working with directory:

• Check working directory: pwd (or cd , for windows)
• Use cd to change working directory.
  • Go up one folder: cd ..
  • Go into a folder: cd ~/documents/github
• Check content of workding directory: ls (or dir for windows)
• Make a new folder: mkdir [foldername]

For our project, we go to our desired directory and create a new folder if necessary.

So, first thing in the terminal, we check the working directory

pwd

Then, we change the working directory to where we want. I have already alread a folder called GitHub in Documents, so I set the working directory there. You can either create a similar folder, or set an existing folder as your working directory.

cd ~/documents/github

We check the content of our working directory.

ls

Here is a screen shot of the process. As you can see, there are already three folders in the working directory.

Clone the repository to computer

In the terminal, clone the repository in the working directory (i.e. from step 3: ~/Documents/GitHub/). To do that, we use git clone with the url in the terminal command line.

git clone https://github.com/Masood87/Learn-how-to-github.git

NOTE: git clone is the first of five git commands we learn here. git clone essentially clones the repository into your working directory (in our case it is ~/Documents/GitHub/).

Type ls in the terminal after git clone to see the cloned files.

ls

Next, change your working directory to the cloned folder Learn-how-to-github

cd Learn-how-to-github

You can check again the content of Learn-how-to-github

ls

Here is a screen shot of the process. As you can see, Learn-how-to-github is added and there is nothing inside it yet.

Make a change to repository and git add

After repository is cloned, we either add new files or modify an existing file. In this case, we add add a new folder with four files. In the finder, I add a folder called screenshots with four .png files in them.

In the terminal, we check the status of the cloned folder using git status.

NOTE: git status is used to check any changes including modification of codes inside a file (if any).

git status

The changes will be noted in red font. We either accept to update the changes in the repository or ignore it. To accept and upload the changes, there are three steps:

• git add to ….
• git commit to ….
• and git push to ….

To git add, there are three ways in this case. The first one add screenshots/ only, and the other two add all.

git add screenshots/

git add -A

git add .

Check the status again

git status

Here is a screen shot of the process. After git add, the status shows four files in green font. These files are changes to be committed.

Commit changes in repository with git commit

The next step after git add that adds the changes is to lock the changes. This locking does not mean applying the changes, which is done using git push.

To commit changes, type git commit and -m with a message inside quotes.

git commit -m "Screen shots used in the final product are added"

At this stage, the change is committed but it is still on the computer and not synchronized with github.com repository. To sync, type git push

git push

Here is a screen shot of the process. After git add, there is git commit and finally git push. Now the files are synchronized with github.com

Workflow

So far, all we discussed was to set up a new repository / project, and commit changes. Other times, we have to pull changes others make in the project.

The first thing one does when starting the day to work on a collaborative project is to change directory to the github repository/project using cd and request a pull of all the changes.

cd ~/documents/github/learn-how-to-github
git pull

More details coming up…

Others

To see all commands we can use and what they do, just type git.