Working with Git and GitHub

Here is a basic work flow when you work with Git and GitHub.

Quick reference

Lets start with an overview of some basic commands.

Command	What
git status	Do a healthcheck and see how you local changes reflect to the current repo and its master.
git add <filename>	Add a specific file to the repo.
git add .	Add all files in the current directory.
git commit -a -m "Message"	Commit all -a changes to the repo and attach a commit message -m "Message".
git push	Push all committed changes to your master on GitHub.
git pull	Update your local repo with and files changed on the master. Useful then updating the repo from several places.
git tag -a v1.0.0 -m "Message"	Add a tag to your repo and attach a tag message.
git push --tags	Push the tags to your master on GitHub.

The commands are further explained below.

Precondition

You have installed Git and you hav forked a copy of the course repo to your own account on GitHub. You have cloned your forked course repo and its available on your local disk and you have created the work directory. All this was done in the "Lab & Development Environment".

Use the terminal Git Bash, or similair.

Check the status of the repo

You can check a status of a repo.

git status

It is sort of a health check on the repo and it compares your local version (your local branch master) with the remote version on GitHub (your origin/master).

Add a file to the repo

Go to your repo and create a new directory work/s01 and move into it.

# Go to the course repo
cd work
mkdir s01
cd s01
touch try.html
ls -l

Note that cd .. moves one directory up in the direcotry hierachy.

You can open the file in your texteditor and add some sample text into it, just for the fun of it.

Use git status to see how it looks.

We shall now add the file to the repo.

git add try.html

The file is added to the repo.

An alternative is git add . which add all files in the current directory.

You can now do another git status.

Commit all changes

When you are done with all your additions, and changes, then you shall commit them. It is like permanent writing your updates into the repo.

git commit -a -m "First commit"

The switches -a means all files changed and -m "First commit" is a commit-message attached to this commit, explaining what the commit was about.

You can the check with git status.

Push changes to GitHub

When you are done with all commits you should push them all to GitHub.

git push

The changes are now uploaded to GitHub and you can reload your repo page on GitHub to check that all changes was uploaded.

Check your git status.

You are now up to date with your master.

Get updates from the master

If there are changes to the master that you have not yet downloaded locally, then do like this.

git pull

Your local repo is then updated to mirror the master.

Create a tag and push it

When you have a certain baseline in your project, you mey want to tag it with a version number. This makes it easier to know tha status of the repo.

git tag -a v1.0.0
git push --tags

You can add a new tag at any stage.