Git

Git is a distributed revision control / software configuration management project created by Linus Torvalds, initially for the Linux kernel development.

Git is by far my favourite revision control system. I not only use it for software management, I also use it as my backup system for any of my text files.

Examples

Basic

• Quick help:

$ git help      # returns most common commands
$ git help -a   # get a list of all installed git commands
$ man git-add   # man page on the 'add' command

• Start a new git repository:

$ mkdir my_new_project && cd my_new_project
$ git init
# create some new files, then:
$ git add .
$ git commit
#~OR~
$ git commit -am 'initial commit message'

• See what has changed since last commit:

$ git diff

• A more concise way to view what has changed and what needs to be done:

$ git status

• Clone a specific remote branch:

$ git clone --single-branch --branch <branchname> <remote-repo>

git-svn

• The following three commands will import a remote svn repository into a local git repository:

$ mkdir pymmlib && cd pymmlib
$ git svn init -t tags -b branches -T trunk https://pymmlib.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/pymmlib
$ git svn fetch

See also

• svn
• Smug — a wiki built with git as the backend (also using Python and Djanjo)
• gitshelve — using git as a versioned data store in Python
• gibak — a backup tool based on git.

External links

• Official website
• Git User's Manual, also distributed with Git in Documentation/user-manual.txt
• Git in six hundred words
• Git from the inside out
• git for the confused — extremely in-depth manual/tutorial
• Kernel.org git repositories
• Kernel Hackers' Guide to git
• Git and WhatIsGit at LinuxMIPS wiki
• "The Thing About Git"
• "A Git Horror Story: Repository Integrity With Signed Commits", by Mike Gerwitz