Congratulations - you've now learned enough to start using git to version control your files and back them up to a secure location.
As promised, there was only a small number (just 10!) git commands that you needed to learn to become proficient in git. Here's the completed cheat sheet, which you can refer back to at any time.
Git Cheat Sheet
(1) git init : Tell git to start version controlling the files in a directory
(initialises git in a directory)
(2) git status : Tell git to print the status of the files in the version
controlled directory.
(3) git add : Tell git to start monitoring (tracking) the versions of a new
file, e.g. `git add README.md` will tell git to track `README.md`
(4) git commit -a : Tell git to save a new snapshot version of all of the tracked
files in the directory. The `-a` means "all files". You can
commit new versions of individual files if you want, but this
is not recommended.
(5) git diff : Tell git to show the differences between the files in the working
directory and the last saved version in the git repository. This will
show the differences for all tracked files. Use
`git diff FILENAME` to limit to only the file `FILENAME`
(6a) git checkout VERSION FILENAME : Tell git to bring `VERSION` version of `FILENAME` into the
current working directory. If `VERSION` is `main` then
restore the last version of `FILENAME` that was saved
to the repository.
(6b) git checkout VERSION : Tell git to change the working directory back to a specific `VERSION`
number. If `VERSION` is `main`, then return the working directory to
the last saved version in the repository.
(7) git log : Print a log of the versions in the repository. Use `git log -n N`
to limit to the last `N` versions. You may need to use `q` to exit
from the text viewer if there are a lot of versions to print.
(8) git mv OLD NEW : Rename a file from name `OLD` to name `NEW`.
(9) git rm FILENAME : Remove the file `FILENAME` from the working directory (it still exists
in the repository). Will only work if the file is tracked by
git and doesn't have any changes. Use `-f` to force removal of files.
(10) git push : Push versions that are saved in the local repository (.git folder)
so they are backed up to a remote repository (.git folder)Now that you know how git works from the command line, you are ready to start using git within a graphical interface. All of the git graphical interfaces are just running the above git commands. There are many graphical interfaces available, a lot of which are described here.
GitHub Desktop is very good, as is the GitHub Mobile App. I also really like the integration of git into Visual Studio Code. Sublime Merge is also recommended, as is git-cola.
In short, choose the tool that works best for you. For me, it is a mix of the command line and VS Code, plus reviewing logs and commits using GitHub mobile. Have a play with all the tools and find the one that works for you!
This workshop has taught you how to use git to version control and back up the files you are working on alone. The real power of git is when you use it in collaboration with others. Git for Collaboration is the next workshop in this series, and it will show you how to git and GitHub to work collaboratively with others. It will show you how you can work as part of a team to edit and version control files together. Think - no more emailing multiple versions of a paper backwards and forwards between many collaborators!
This "Introducing Version Control with Git" workshop is based on our original Beginning Git workshop, which was developed by Christopher Woods.
All text is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License with all code snippets licensed as MIT.
The source for the material can be found on GitHub where fixes are welcome.