Your First Git Repo

References:

Before you can do anything useful with git, you will need a repository to work with. Let’s create an empty directory which will become your first repository:

[1]$ cd ~
[2]$ mkdir -p repos/example
[3]$ cd repos/example

Creating a repo with git is as simple as this:

[4]$ git init

To see what your empty repo looks like:

[5]$ find .

Create a new file in your repo:

[6]$ cat > hello <<EOF
#!/bin/bash
echo "Hello world!"
EOF
[7]$ chmod 755 hello
[8]$ ./hello

Get a status of the repo:

[9]$ git status

Tell git you want to track the file:

[10]$ git add hello
[11]$ git status

And finally, commit the staged file to the repo:

[12]$ git commit
[13]$ git log
[14]$ git status

Let’s make some changes to hello:

[15]$ echo 'echo "goodbye"' >> hello
[16]$ git status
[17]$ git diff
[18]$ git add hello
[19]$ git status
[20]$ git diff
[21]$ git diff --cached

We now have some staged changes. Let’s make another change before we commit:

[22]$ echo 'exit 0' >> hello
[23]$ git status
[24]$ git diff
[25]$ git diff --cached

At this point, we can do one of two things:

  • Commit the staged changes, then add the unstaged changes and commit again. This will give us two separate commits:

    [26]$ git commit
[27]$ git add hello
[28]$ git diff --cached
[29]$ git commit
[30]$ git log

  • Stage the second change and commit. This will combine the two changes into a single change which will be a single commit:

    [31]$ git add hello
[32]$ git diff --cached
[33]$ git commit
[34]$ git log

Try both of these methods (make a different change the seconds time around) and compare the results.

At this point, you should have a basic understanding of the git add, git status, git diff and git commit commands.