If you understand the above diagram well and good, but if you don’t, you need not worry, I will be explaining these operations in this Git Tutorial one by one. Let us begin with the basic operations.

You need to install Git on your system first. If you need help with the installation,

click here⁠

In this Git Tutorial, I will show you the commands and the operations using Git Bash. Git Bash is a text-only command line interface for using Git on Windows which provides features to run automated scripts.

After installing Git in your Windows system, just open your folder/directory where you want to store all your project files; right click and select ‘Git Bash here’.

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This will open up Git Bash terminal where you can enter commands to perform various Git operations.

Now, the next task is to initialize your repository.

Initialize

In order to do that, we use the command git init. Please refer to the below screenshot.

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git init creates an empty Git repository or re-initializes an existing one. It basically creates a .git directory with sub directories and template files. Running a git init in an existing repository will not overwrite things that are already there. It rather picks up the newly added templates.

Now that my repository is initialized, let me create some files in the directory/repository. For e.g. I have created two text files namely edureka1.txt and edureka2.txt.

Let’s see if these files are in my index or not using the command git status. The index holds a snapshot of the content of the working tree/directory, and this snapshot is taken as the contents for the next change to be made in the local repository.

Git status

The git status command lists all the modified files which are ready to be added to the local repository.

Let us type in the command to see what happens:

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This shows that I have two files which are not added to the index yet. This means I cannot commit changes with these files unless I have added them explicitly in the index.

Add

This command updates the index using the current content found in the working tree and then prepares the content in the staging area for the next commit.

Thus, after making changes to the working tree, and before running the commit command, you must use the add command to add any new or modified files to the index. For that, use the commands below:

git add <directory>

git add <file>

Let me demonstrate the git add for you so that you can understand it better.

I have created two more files edureka3.txt and edureka4.txt. Let us add the files using the command git add -A. This command will add all the files to the index which are in the directory but not updated in the index yet.

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Now that the new files are added to the index, you are ready to commit them.

Commit

It refers to recording snapshots of the repository at a given time. Committed snapshots will never change unless done explicitly. Let me explain how commit works with the diagram below:

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Here, C1 is the initial commit, i.e. the snapshot of the first change from which another snapshot is created with changes named C2. Note that the master points to the latest commit.

Now, when I commit again, another snapshot C3 is created and now the master points to C3 instead of C2.

Git aims to keep commits as lightweight as possible. So, it doesn’t blindly copy the entire directory every time you commit; it includes commit as a set of changes, or “delta” from one version of the repository to the other. In easy words, it only copies the changes made in the repository.

You can commit by using the command below:

git commit

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This will commit the staged snapshot and will launch a text editor prompting you for a commit message.

Or you can use:

git commit -m “<message>”

Let’s try it out.

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As you can see above, the git commit command has committed the changes in the four files in the local repository.

Now, if you want to commit a snapshot of all the changes in the working directory at once, you can use the command below:

git commit -a

I have created two more text files in my working directory viz. edureka5.txt and edureka6.txt but they are not added to the index yet.

I am adding edureka5.txt using the command:

git add edureka5.txt

I have added edureka5.txt to the index explicitly but not edureka6.txt and made changes in the previous files. I want to commit all changes in the directory at once. Refer to the below snapshot.

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This command will commit a snapshot of all changes in the working directory but only includes modifications to tracked files i.e. the files that have been added with git add at some point in their history. Hence, edureka6.txt was not committed because it was not added to the index yet. But changes in all previous files present in the repository were committed, i.e. edureka1.txt, edureka2.txt, edureka3.txt, edureka4.txt and edureka5.txt.

Now I have made my desired commits in my local repository.

Note that before you affect changes to the central repository you should always pull changes from the central repository to your local repository to get updated with the work of all the collaborators that have been contributing in the central repository. For that we will use the pull command.

Pull

The git pull command fetches changes from a remote repository to a local repository. It merges upstream changes in your local repository, which is a common task in Git based collaborations.

But first, you need to set your central repository as origin using the command:

git remote add origin <link of your central repository>

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Now that my origin is set, let us extract files from the origin using pull. For that use the command:

git pull origin master

This command will copy all the files from the master branch of remote repository to your local repository.

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Since my local repository was already updated with files from master branch, hence the message is Already up-to-date. Refer to the screen shot above.

Note: One can also try pulling files from a different branch using the following command:

git pull origin <branch-name>

Your local Git repository is now updated with all the recent changes. It is time you make changes in the central repository by using the push command.

Push

This command transfers commits from your local repository to your remote repository. It is the opposite of pull operation.

Pulling imports commits to local repositories whereas pushing exports commits to the remote repositories .

The use of git push is to publish your local changes to a central repository. After you’ve accumulated several local commits and are ready to share them with the rest of the team, you can then push them to the central repository by using the following command:

git push <remote>

Note : This remote refers to the remote repository which had been set before using the pull command.

This pushes the changes from the local repository to the remote repository along with all the necessary commits and internal objects. This creates a local branch in the destination repository.

Let me demonstrate it for you.

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The above files are the files which we have already committed previously in the commit section and they are all “push-ready“. I will use the command git push origin master to reflect these files in the master branch of my central repository.

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Let us now check if the changes took place in my central repository.

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Yes, it did. :-)

To prevent overwriting, Git does not allow push when it results in a non-fast forward merge in the destination repository.

Note: A non-fast forward merge means an upstream merge i.e. merging with ancestor or parent branches from a child branch.

To enable such merge, use the command below:

git push <remote> –force

The above command forces the push operation even if it results in a non-fast forward merge.

At this point of this Git Tutorial, I hope you have understood the basic commands of Git. Now, let’s take a step further to learn branching and merging in Git.

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(Extra) Kommandon

Git and Github Tutorial

Git Tutorial — Operations & Commands

Initialize

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