Learn Git Command with

Practical Examples on Linux –

Part 1
Git is distributed version control system. It is primarily used by software
developers for their source code management. Git is free and open
source software and many large organizations use it to manage their
huge code base.

In this tutorial we’ll get familiar with Git. This will be hands on guide.
This tutorial assumes that Git is installed on your system.

Git user initial configuration

First we have to configure settings for Git user. We can make these
settings for all repositories present on current system or for a particular
repository. Let us understand this with example:

User identity
In Git we can specify user identity by providing its name and e-mail
address. This information will be used during each commit operation.
Execute below command in terminal to assign identity:

$ git config --global user.name "Linuxtechi User"

$ git config --global user.email "linuxtechiuser@linuxtechi.com"

Editor
This setting configures editor, which will be used while providing commit
message:

$ git config --global core.editor vim

Compression
This setting configures compression level to be used. Valid range for
compression is -1 to 9. -1 value indicates zlib compression and is default
compression level. 0 value means no compression, and 1 to 9 are various
speed/size tradeoffs, 9 being slowest.
$ git config --global core.compression 2

Diff tool
This setting configures diff viewer tool. For example, below command
configures vimdiff as a diff tool:

$ git config --global diff.tool vimdiff

In above commands we have used –global option everywhere, which will

make this configuration global. It means that same configuration will be
applied to all repositories present on current system. To make
configuration repository specific just remove –global option.
List configuration
To list Git configuration execute below command in terminal:

$ git config -l

This command will generate following output:

core.repositoryformatversion=0

core.filemode=true

core.bare=false

core.logallrefupdates=true

core.editor=vim

core.compression=2

user.name=Linuxtechi User

user.email=linuxtechiuser@linuxtechi.com

diff.tool=vimdiff

Git repositories
Repository is a location where source code is stored. We can either
create new repository or use existing repository. To create new empty
repository execute below command:
$ mkdir my-repo.git

$ cd my-repo.git

$ git init

Initialized empty Git repository in my-repo.git

This method will be useful when you are starting with new project.
Another method is to use existing repository. Such a repository is hosted
on remote server like GitHub. To download remote repository use clone
command as follows:

$ git clone https://github.com/linuxtechiuser/my-repo.git

In above command last argument is path of remote repository.

Git workflow
In this section we’ll discuss git workflow.

Introduce new changes

First step is to introduce new changes. It can be addition of new file or
updating existing files. Let us create a new file and modify existing file

$ touch AUTHORS # Create new file

$ echo "New Contents" >> README # Update existing file

Check repository status

Git is content tracking system, it will identify above two changes. Let us
check repository status:

$ git status -s

M README

?? AUTHORS

In above output letter M appears before README which indicates that

existing file is modified. Whereas ?? appears before AUTHORS which
indicates that this is new file and Git is not aware about it hence such a
file is called untracked file.

Add file to changeset

Let us instruct Git to track this new file. We can achieve this using add
command. This operation will start tracking changes made to this file.

$ git add AUTHORS

Let us check repository status now:

$ git status -s

A AUTHORS

M README

Above output shows A before AUTHORS which indicates that this file is
newly added under Git. We can add any number of files using this
command.

Remove file from changeset

Let us instruct Git to untrack this newly added file. We can achieve this
using reset command. This operation will remove file from changeset

$ git reset AUTHORS

$ git status -s

M README

?? AUTHORS

Above output shows that AUTHORS file is not tracked by Git.

Commit changes
In Git, files which are part of changeset will form a commit. Each commit
will get unique ID. Let us create changeset first

$ git add AUTHORS

$ git add README

Now let us commit changes to local repository with commit message. In

below command -m argument indicates commit message.

$ git commit -m "Updated README and added AUTHORS"

When you execute above command it will generate following output:

[master 0b124eb] Updated README and added AUTHORS

2 files changed, 1 insertion(+)

create mode 100644 AUTHORS

Review changes
In this section we’ll discuss commands which will allow us to review
repository changes.

View commit log

Repository can contain multiple commits by multiple authors. We can use
log command to view all available commits:

$ git log

When you execute above command it will generate following output:

commit 0b124eb6d0109d837f6f9396c9937406abd3f456 (HEAD -> master)

Author: Linuxtechi User <linuxtechiuser@linuxtechi.com>

Date: Fri Jul 27 21:06:55 2018 +0530

Updated README and added AUTHORS

This is commit we had created earlier. In above command:

 Hexadecimal ID represents a commit ID
 Author section of commit shows details about who made these
changes
 Date section shows date and timestamp of commit
View short commit log
Above command will show detailed information about each commit. To
view short description about each commit use –oneline option as follows:

$ git log --oneline

When you execute above command, it will generate following output:

0b124eb (HEAD -> master) Updated README and added AUTHORS

View commit
Commit ID is associated with each changeset. We can use this ID with
show command to view commit contents.

$ git show 0b124eb6d0109d837f6f9396c9937406abd3f456

When you execute above command it will generate following output:

commit 0b124eb6d0109d837f6f9396c9937406abd3f456 (HEAD -> master)

Author: Linuxtechi User <linuxtechiuser@linuxtechi.com>

Date: Fri Jul 27 21:06:55 2018 +0530

Updated README and added AUTHORS

diff --git a/AUTHORS b/AUTHORS

new file mode 100644

index 0000000..e69de29

diff --git a/README b/README

index 980a0d5..5680123 100644

--- a/README
+++ b/README

@@ -1 +1,2 @@

Hello World!

+New Contents

View diff
Diff command allows us to review changes before creating changeset.
Diff command shows the differences between repository and local
workspace. Let us modify README file and view differences

$ echo "Generating diff" >> README

$ git diff

diff --git a/README b/README

index 5680123..3158230 100644

--- a/README

+++ b/README

@@ -1,2 +1,3 @@

Hello World!

New Contents

+Generating diff

In above command:

 + sign indicates changes which are added to file

 – sign indicates changes which are removed from file
Working with remote repositories
So far we were working with local repository only. Other developers
cannot use changes which are made by us as they are local. Hence code
collaboration is not possible. This section will describe commands which
will allow us to interact with remote repositories

Publish changes to remote repository

We can publish local changes to remote repository so that other
developers can use it. Before publishing changes we have to create
changeset and local commit. We can publish changes using push
command as follows:

$ git push

This command copies changes from local workspace to remote

repository. In Git, this operation is referred as push operation.

Sync workspace with remote repository

Many developers can publish their workspace changes to remote
repository. Git allows us to download those changes and sync workspace
with repository. We can achieve this using pull command:

$ git pull

In Git, this operation is referred as pull operation.

Miscellaneous Git commands

This section discusses miscellaneous Git commands which will be useful
to perform day-to-day tasks:

Modify latest commit

Git allows us to modify latest commit. We can use this method to avoid
creation of new commit. It is mostly used to modify previous commit
message. To modify latest commit use –amend option as follows:

$ echo "Yet another new change" >> README

$ git add README

$ git commit --amend -m "This is amended commit

Now let us check the commit log:

$ git log

commit 8bf67aec1d1de87f03ab6aae93940b17826fde1c (HEAD -> master)

Author: Linuxtechi User <linuxtechiuser@linuxtechi.com>

Date: Fri Jul 27 21:54:55 2018 +0530

This is amended commit

If you observe above output carefully then we can see new commit
message, its ID and new timestamp.

Remove untracked files

Untracked files are those which are unknown to Git. We can remove all
untracked files using clean command.

Let us create few untracked files:

$ touch delete-me-1 delete-me-2 delete-me-3

To remove all above untracked file use clean command with -f option as
follows:

$ git clean -f

Removing delete-me-1

Removing delete-me-2

Removing delete-me-3

Please note that this command will remove files permanently hence use it
with caution.

View commits of particular author

If we use log command then it shows commits of all authors. To view

commits of particular author use –author flag as follows:

$ git log --author=Linuxtechi

When you execute above command it will list all the commits of
Linuxtechi authors as follows:

commit 8bf67aec1d1de87f03ab6aae93940b17826fde1c (HEAD -> master)

Author: Linuxtechi User <linuxtechiuser@linuxtechi.com>

Date: Fri Jul 27 21:54:55 2018 +0530

This is amended commit

View history of each file line by line

To view line by line history we can use blame command.

$ git blame README

When you execute above command it will generate following output:

76294131 (Linuxtechi User 2018-07-27 21:12:11 -0700 1) Hello World!

8bf67aec (Linuxtechi User 2018-07-27 21:54:55 +0530 2) New changes

8bf67aec (Linuxtechi User 2018-07-27 21:54:55 +0530 3) Yet another changes

In above command:

 First column indicates commit ID

 Second column indicates author
 Third column indicates timestamps
 Last column indicates line number and file content
View diff from staging area
When you create changeset using add command then file is logically
moved to staging area. Let us see with this example:

$ echo "Let us demonstrate staging area" >> README

$ git add README

$ git diff
Above command will not show any difference as file is move to staging
area. Let us use –staged operation to view differences:

$ git diff --staged

diff --git a/README b/README

index 74729a2..8bc5ffd 100644

--- a/README

+++ b/README

@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@

Hello World!

New changes

Yet another changes

+Let us demonstrate staging area

Conclusion
In this tutorial we discussed basic operations of Git with simple
examples. This tutorial is good starting point for Git newbies. Shortly we
are coming with Part 2…