Branching

Allows you to keep different versions of files.

It's forming a small group of work, and isolating it from all the other work.

When the work on the feature branch is complete, it should be merged into another branch.

E.g. creating a new branch for each feature you'll be working on. This example was generated with this bash command.

Version Control

It keeps track of changes to a file or files over a span of time.

This allows you to go back to a previous version at a later time.

It also allows you to work with others, and it allows you to work offline.

Staging Area

It allows you to have files locally without pushing them to the repository.

You add or remove files to the staging area before committing them.

Committing a change adds a commit, creating a new HEAD, thus making files unmodified.

Git has a few commands

• Init
• Clone
• Status *
• Log
• Add/Remove *
• Commit *

• Push *
• Pull *
• Branch *
• Checkout *
• Merge
• Rebase

git init

This command is used to create a new repository in an existing directory (folder)

git clone <url> [cool_name]

This command is used to clone an existing repository. It copies code from the url, and downloads it locally.

git status

This shows you the status of the repository. If anything is modified and is not excluded, it will be noted by this command.

git [add or remove] <file or dir>

These commands are what you need to add or remove files from your staging area.

git commit

This stores the staged changes in a new commit along with a log message. This does not push it to the remote.

git pull

This fetches changes from the remote, and merges them in locally. This is what you'd use to ensure that your code is up-to-date.

git branch/checkout <branch>

This allows you to create a new branch and work on it (respectfully).

git merge <branch>

This will merge all the commits from the `<branch>` into the working branch by including a merge commit. This is used when you want to combine branches.

git rebase <branch>

This will merge all the commits from the `<branch>` into the working branch. This is used when you want to combine branches, but want to keep history linear.