Brief Intro To Git

What is Git? — It is a version control system that allows you to maintain and track changes in your project, and easily collaborate with others.

What is GitHub? — This is a place where you can host your repository of your project’s updates that are available to others on your team, or to be shared with the world!

What are Branches? — These are the pathways you will be working in. The ‘main’ branch is your release ready project. Other branches can be made like a ‘dev’ branch, to allow you to work on your project while not interfering with the ‘main’ branch. Ultimately branches can be merged into your ‘main’, so that all the changes you made in the ‘dev’ branch are committed and pushed into the final project.

Pull? Commit? Push??? — These are the key phrases to familiarize yourself while using Git.

Pull: is the process of updating your local branch with the most recent version that is available on your project’s GitHub. It is especially important to use this command when working with a team to make sure you will be editing in the right version of your project.

Commit: is the process of saving your changes within your project to your local branch. If you do not commit your changes, then your branch will not add these changes to your updated branch.

Push: is the process of updating your local branch to your online GitHub, thus making this branch — and all it’s committed changes — available to anyone that has access to your projects GitHub.

Why is it important? — Using Git and maintaining clean branches will keep your project organized, and allow you to easily go back to a previous state if you encounter any bugs. You can test new ideas without having to worry about affecting your current project state, and if working with a team, it allows you to make changes to individual aspects while maintaining a good file-structure.

How to get started? — Download Git from https://git-scm.com/ and sign up to GitHub at https://github.com/.