Learn Git in just 10 easy steps

7 min readOct 6, 2021

In this tutorial, we are going to discuss what is Git, why do people use it in the industry, how to learn git in just 10 easy steps and what is the workflow for Git. Git is the most frequently used open-source tool that every company uses for its software development.

Let’s start!!

Why do we need Git?

Suppose you have a project but don’t know how to collaborate with others, what will you do?

And if you are changing the code every week, how will you track the changes i.e. how will you do the version control?

Git is the solution for that.

Nowadays, Software Development takes place in a distributive way which means not just one developer work on one solution, there are multiple people work on the same solution independently. It is necessary to have tools that allow Distributed Software Development and Git is one solution to that problem.

Table of Content

We are going to learn Git in 10 easy steps as follows:

What is Git
What is GitHub
How to Create an account on GitHub
How to install Git
How to set up the configuration
How to initialize a Git repository
How to clone a GitHub repository
Git Workflow
Workflow Demo
Branching and merging

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So first, let’s understand what is Git?

What is Git?

Git is a Free and Open Source Distributed Version Control System.

Didn’t understand anything?

Okay! Let me take an example.

Let’s say 10 people are working on the same project. Now, if they want to stay updated with the latest code, one way is to keep exchanging the latest code. But this might be time-consuming.

Another way is to use Git.

It allows multiple developers to access the source code of the project and can modify the code which can also be seen by other developers.

Version Control allows the user to have versions of the project. Git also stores the history of changes that were made at a particular time. You can go back to any version if needed. In this way, even if you make any mistake, you have the flexibility of reverting.

Every code is stored in a repository. You can consider a repository as a folder that stores all the code files.

What is GitHub?

Oops! Is there any difference between Git and GitHub? I used to consider that both are the same.

Yes! There is a difference between both!

GitHub is a cloud-based hosting service that allows you to manage git repositories.

2. How to create an account on GitHub?

Visit GitHub and sign up with the required details.

3. Creating Repository on GitHub

Sign in to your GitHub account.
Click on New Repository as shown in the below image.

Enter the name of the repository you wish to give.
Choose whether the repository is public or private. Private repositories can only be accessed by you and to whom you allow access. Public repositories can be seen by anyone.

Congrats, your first repository has been created.

Now we’ll learn how to manage the repository using Git. First, let us install git.

4. How to install Git

Visit Git and install according to your Operating System.
Now, you can open Terminal (For Mac, Linux) to use Git or Git Bash for Windows.

(This is how Git looks like)

Now that we have completed the installation. Let us configure Git to interact with.

5. How to configure Git

Before using Git, you need to initialize it with your GitHub Credentials, i.e User Name, and Email that you used while registering.

$ git config — global user.name “YOUR_USERNAME”
$ git config — global user.email “YOUR_EMAIL”

6. How to initialize a Git repository

Initializing creates an empty git repository or re-initializes an empty one.

7. Clone a GitHub Repository

Cloning a repository will download the code to your local system so that you can work locally.

Go to the GitHub Repository you want to clone.
Click on the Code button on the right side of the page.
You can either download the code as a zip file or also download using Git Bash.
For downloading using Bash, copy the link provided.

$ git clone <link>

8. Git Workflow

There are 4 fundamental elements in the Git Workflow:

Working Area
Staging Area
Local Repository
Remote Repository

9. Workflow Demo

A file in a working directory can be staged, i.e. the changes you have made to the code will be marked to be pushed into the local repository later.

$ git add .

This command adds the files in the working directory to the staging area. Let’s suppose I have made two files “hello.txt” and “first.txt” and I want to add them to the staging area.

Now you can push the changes to the local repository.

$ git commit -m"add changes"

This command pushes the changes to the local repository. -m flag is used to pass a message saying the change you did.

Let’s commit to the changes we did previously.

You can also unstage the files if you realize that you have pushed the wrong changes.

$ git reset HEAD~1

Now that we have the changes pushed to the local repository, finally, it’s time to push the changes to the remote repository also.

$ git push origin main

The changes are now finally pushed to the remote repository also.

Now, you can see the changes on the repository also.

How to find what is the status of your changes?

$ git status

Let us suppose you push quite many changes to the remote repository, but now you think that those were not useful and you want to revert to the previous version. How would you do it?

Git also provides functionality to revert to the previous version or any version previously made. The following command will revert to the previous version.

$ git checkout .

10. Branching and merging

Branching

Git Branches are a pointer to a snapshot of your changes. You can have separate branches for different modules of a project. And at last, you can combine these changes and merge them into the main branch.

Steps to create branch

Creating a new branch first.

$ git branch <BranchName>

Checking out to the new branch. Let’s assume the name of the new branch is dev

$ git checkout dev

Merging

You can also combine two branches. Suppose you are in the main branch and you want to merge the changes of the dev branch into the main branch. You can do so using

$ git merge dev

Now, we have added some text in hello.txt, and let us push into the dev branch.

Now, let us merge the dev branch into the main branch

Conclusion

Git is a very important tool used in IT Industry for collaboration between teams. It allows to maintain versions and also distribute the code among each member seamlessly. Knowing Git is a must nowadays. I hope, through this tutorial you will be able to implement Git in your projects.

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