What does a version control system do?

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By keeping track of the changes that we make to our files, a VCS lets us know when a file changed, who changed it, and also lets us easily roll back those changes.

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General form of commands

Git <git-options> <commands> <command-options> <operands>

.git directory

The git directory acts as a database for all the changes tracked in Git and the working tree acts as a sandbox where we can edit the current versions of the files.

Staging area (index)

A file maintained by Git that contains all of the information about what files and changes are going to go into your next commit

What do we need to do after modifying a file tracked by Git?

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After modifying a file, we need to stage those changes and then commit them afterwards.

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Initialize new git repository in your system

mkdir scripts
cd scripts

# The Git init command can create a new empty repository in a current directory
git init

# The ls-l.git command checks inside the directory to see the different things that it contains. This is called the Git directory. 
# The Git directory is a database for your Git project that stores the changes and the change history.
ls -l .git

git config -l

touch disk_utility.py

# The Git status command is used to get some information about the current working tree and pending changes.
git status

# This command will immediately move a new file from untracked to stage status
# Using the Git add command allows Git to track your file and uses the selected file as a parameter when adding it to the staging area. 
# The staging area is a file maintained by Git that contains all the information about what files and changes are going to go into your next commit.
git add disk_utility.py

# When a file is staged, it means it's been added to the staging area and it's ready to be commited to the Git repository
git status

# This command will only commit the changes that have been added to the staging area, untracked files or 
# modified files that weren't staged will be ignored
# The .git commit command is run to remove changes made from the staging area to the .git directory. 
# When this command is run, it tells Git to save changes. A text editor is opened that allows a commit message to be entered.
git commit -m "new file"

# View Git commit history
git log

Telling git who you are & global settings

# The Git config command is used to set the values to identify who made changes to Git repositories
git config --global user.name "Senthil Palanivelu”
git config --global user.email "[email protected]"

git config --global core.editor vim
git config --global core.autocrlf input
git config --global help.format web
git config --global diff.tool vimdiff
git config --global merge.tool vimdiff
git config --global difftool.prompt false
Git config —-global merge.conflictstyle diff3

Check global configuration settings in user home directory

cat ~/.gitconfig or git config —-global —-list

Creating alias for long commands

git config <scope option> alias.<name> <command string>
git config --global alias.hist 'log --pretty=format:"%h ( %ad %an ) %s %d" --graph —-date=short —-name-only’
git config --global alias.globallist 'config --global --list'

Staging scope, Moving files from working directory to staging area