Table Of ContentBOOKS FOR PROFESSIONALS BY PROFESSIONALS®
Gajda
Git Recipes
RELATED
Git is an open source project that is fast becoming the most popular version control system
in the world. And Git Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach is your #1 reference for
everything you ever need to do with Git.
Whether you’re relatively new to Git or you need a refresher, or if you just need a quick,
handy reference for common tasks in Git, Git Recipes is just the reference book you need.
With recipes to cover many popular tasks, including working with GitHub, Git Recipes
shows you how to initialize new projects, how to work with clones and forks, and what you
can do about conflicts. With many recipes focused on using branches, the book gives you
practical scenarios you may find yourself dealing with while using Git.
You’ll learn how to:
• Work with both well-known and private repositories
• Use branches for everyday tasks
• Join independent histories using both merge and rebase operations
• Simplify most commonly used commands with appropriate aliases
• Deal with troublesome issues like dangling revisions
• Rewrite the history
• Pinpoint who made specific changes
• Deal with textual and binary conflicts
• Work with hosted solutions like GitHub
• Work with Git in groups
• Install and configure a virtual system that provides Git hosting services
• Use vagrant for configuring virtual hosts
If you work with Git at all, you need this hands-on, practical reference for all things Git.
Shelve in ISBN 978-1-4302-6103-2
Programming Languages/General 54999
User level:
Beginning–Advanced
SOURCE CODE ONLINE 9 781430 261032
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Contents at a Glance
About the Author ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xxvii
About the Technical Reviewer �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xxix
Acknowledgments �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xxxi
■ Chapter 1: Getting Started with Git �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������1
■ Chapter 2: Working with Well-Known Repositories �����������������������������������������������������������7
■ Chapter 3: Creating Local Repositories with Linear History ��������������������������������������������41
■ Chapter 4: Managing Files �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������79
■ Chapter 5: Branches ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������105
■ Chapter 6: Merging Branches ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������147
■ Chapter 7: Rebasing Branches ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������163
■ Chapter 8: Modifying the History �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������183
■ Chapter 9: Resolving Conflicts ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������209
■ Chapter 10: Remote Repositories and Synchronization ������������������������������������������������227
■ Chapter 11: Hosting git Git Repositories �����������������������������������������������������������������������279
■ Chapter 12: Working with Github�com ��������������������������������������������������������������������������327
■ Chapter 13: More Recipes ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������355
Index ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������381
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Chapter 1
Getting Started with Git
The manufacturers of computer software are facing difficult challenges caused by quite trivial reasons. A typical
application is produced by a team of developers working on hundreds, if not thousands, of files on a short schedule.
Each file needs to be available for modification by all of the developers at any moment. The situation is complicated
even more when we supplement the scenario with the time line. Every file can be modified by any developer at any
chosen moment. The following three simple factors make the management of a source code a nontrivial task:
• The number of files
• The number of developers
• The time line
These problems have been known for many years, and as you might expect, there are various software tools
that make group work on text files a lot of easier. These tools are commonly referred to as version control software or
revision control software. And git belongs to this family.
What is git?
Git is a distributed version control system created to support the development of a Linux kernel. It was started in
April 2005 by Linus Torvalds and is now maintained by Junio C. Hamano.
The main features that set git apart among other version control systems are:
• Branching
• Data integrity
• Locality
• Distributed system
• Open source
• Last but not least—popularity
The branching model is git's most amazing feature. I consider it alone to be a sufficient reason to switch to git.
With git, branches can be created almost instantaneously and can be easily merged and shared with other developers.
Although there are many sophisticated operations that can be performed on branches, the basic usage is easy and
straightforward. This encourages the extensive usage of branches, and I think I am not exaggerating when I say that
the git branching model changed the way developers work.
Data integrity means that git tracks all the files and directories of your project in such a way that it is not possible to
introduce unnoticed changes. Even if you want to change a single byte you have to create a revision. When you create a
revision, there is no way to hide something inside. This is a built-in feature that cannot be turned off. Therefore you can
trust git completely: all the changes are introduced as revisions and every revision can be inspected.
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Chapter 1 ■ GettinG Started with Git
Locality increases git’s efficiency and allows you to execute many git commands even if the network is down.
When you work with git you are not connected to any server. Most commands, such as commit, branch, merge, and
rebase are performed locally in a similar way to typical filesystem commads such as mkdir, ls, rm. They don’t carry out
any data transfer.
Because git is a distributed version control system, every repository is fully functional and can serve both as a
sender and a receiver. If there is a channel of communication between the computers, their repositories can exchange
the contents in both directions. Therefore, you can create more complicated workflows than just the client/server
paradigm that are used by centralized revision control systems.
Added to this is the fact that git is an open-source project and it is becoming the most popular version control
system on the world—you’ll see that there is good reason to start learning git.
1-1. Installing git on Windows
Problem
You want to install git on Windows.
Solution
Go to http://msysgit.github.io/ and download the most recent installer version of git for Windows. At the time of
writing this was version 1.8.3. The installer was named: Git-1.8.3-preview20130601.exe. Run the installer leaving all
options set to default values. After this, git is ready to be run on your system.
How It Works
There are two methods for installing git on Windows:
• Use Cygwin package available at http://www.cygwin.com
• Use the standalone installer called msysgit.
In this procedure we use msysgit package.
When you run the msysgit installer downloaded from http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/ you will be asked
two questions:
• How to configure the paths?
• How to configure the conversion of end of line character?
The dialog box titled Adjusting your PATH environment sets the path environment variable. Msysgit installer
contains not only git binaries but also a number of Linux programs such as ssh, curl, ls, mkdir, rm, and find. With
default settings the installer copies git and these programs to the following directories:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\bin
This folder contains ls, mkdir, ssh, curl, find, etc.
C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\cmd
This folder contains the git binary file and the shell script to run git
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Chapter 1 ■ GettinG Started with Git
The first choice in the dialog box is Use Git Bash only. With this setting the path variable is not modified. When
you start a Windows command line and type git, the command line will respond with a message that the git command
does not exist.
The second choice, Run Git from the Windows Command Prompt, adds the C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\cmd
folder to your path. Thus, you can use git command in the windows command line. When you type ssh in the windows
command line, however, the system will respond with an unknown command message.
The last choice is Run Git and included Unix tools from the Windows Command Prompt. This choice adds two
folders C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\bin and C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\cmd to your path. Now, you can use all the
included tools in the Windows Command line: ssh, git, ls, curl, and so on. But some commands in C:\Program
Files (x86)\Git\bin, such as find, overlap with the original commands available in Windows. The original find is not
available now in the command line.
When I was writing this book my intention was to present the commands that can work in exactly the same
way on all platforms. Thus I decided to use the bash command line. If you work on Windows and want to use bash
command line, then you can leave the default first choice Use Git Bash only.
The second dialog box, which is titled Configuring the line ending conversions, sets the configuration option named
core.autocrlf to one of these values: true, input, or false. The meaning of this setting is summarized in Table 1-1.
Table 1-1. All values of the core.autocrlf option and their influence
on the checkout and commit operations
Value Checkout Commit
True LF => CRLF CRLF => LF
input None CRLF => LF
false None None
When you choose the first setting, the value true, git will convert the end-of-line characters in your files during
the checkout and commit operations. When you check the files out, git will convert LF to CRLF and when you commit
git will convert CRLF to LF.
The second choice, input, turns the conversion of new lines only when you commit. In this case git converts the
line endings from CRLF to LF.
The third setting (false) turns all the conversions off.
The conversion of end-of-line characters is explained in greater detail in Recipes 13-2 through 13-6. No matter
which is your current choice, you can always change the setting using one of these commands:
$ git config --global core.autocrlf true
$ git config --global core.autocrlf input
$ git config --global core.autocrlf false
When the installer finishes, run the git bash application available in the Start menu. To verify that the installation
was successful, you can run the command:
$ git --version
It should print the version of git installed on your system.
■ Hint if you want to change the current directory to the root directory of drive c use the following command: $ cd /c
this is the equivalent of the command: c:
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Chapter 1 ■ GettinG Started with Git
1-2. Installing git on Linux
Problem
You want to install git on Linux.
Solution
Depending on your system run one of the commands:
# for Ubuntu
$ sudo apt-get install git
# for Fedora
$ sudo yum install git
How It Works
The easiest way to install git on Linux is to use the available packages. If you want to compile and install git using its
source follow the procedure described in Recipe 11-3.
To verify that the installation was successful, you can run the command:
$ git --version
It should print the version of git installed on your system.
1-3. Installing git on OS X
Problem
You want to install git on OS X.
Solution
Visit the http://code.google.com/p/git-osx-installer/ site and download the most recent available version of git.
Run the downloaded installer leaving all options set to the default values.
How It Works
The easiest way of installing git on OS X is to use the graphical installer. To verify that the installation was successful,
you can run the command:
$ git --version
It should print the version of git installed on your system.
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Chapter 1 ■ GettinG Started with Git
1-4. Accessing the manual
Problem
You want to access the git manual.
Solution
Run the following commands:
$ git help
$ git help -a
$ git help -g
$ git help commit
$ git commit --help
$ git help merge
$ git merge --help
How It Works
Git commands are divided into two major groups:
• Porcelain commands
• Plumbing commands
Porcelain commands are high-level commands meant for every day use. This group includes, among the others:
$ git add
$ git commit
$ git help
$ git push
The other group, called plumbing, contains low-level commands. Here are some examples:
$ git receive-pack
$ git update-index
$ git upload-pack
By default, the command $ git help lists only porcelain commands. If you want to the list plumbing commands
as well as the porcelain commands, use -a switch $ git help -a.
You can access the documentation for a specific git subcommand using the following syntax:
$ git help [COMMAND]
$ git [COMMAND] --help
Here are the commands to access the documentation of the $ git commit command:
$ git help commit
$ git commit --help
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Chapter 1 ■ GettinG Started with Git
1-5. Configuring git
Problem
You want to configure git to be ready for work.
Solution
Run the following command:
$ git config --global user.name
It should print the empty results. That is because right after the installation the user name is not configured.
Set the user.name configuration option using the following command:
$ git config --global user.name "John Doe"
Instead of John Doe type your name and surname.
Next, run the command:
$ git config --global user.email [email protected]
This command will set your email.
How It Works
If you want to create commits within git repository, you have to configure two settings: user.name and user.email.
Otherwise, when you run the $ git commit command, git will print the warning. The strings that you use as values for
user.name and user.email will be stored within every commit you create.
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Chapter 2
Working with Well-Known
Repositories
We will start our tour exploring existing and quite well-known repositories. The main goal of this chapter is to get
familiar with repositories—their types and structure. In this chapter, you will learn the following:
• What are the most popular hosting solutions for git repositories?
• How to create a local copy of a repository that is hosted on Github.com or Bitbucket.org?
Once we know how to clone a repository, we can then analyze its structure. Then we will explore the working
directory—the git directory and its contents. At that point we will be able to classify a repository as either bare
or non-bare.
Next, we will discuss the various commands that print the information about the repository, such as
• The list of revisions
• The list of contributors
• The number of revisions
• The number of contributors
• The disk usage of the git directory and the working directory
To make the chore of typing long git commands easier, I will define their aliases.
■ Note I have tested all the commands presented in this chapter and in the book on two platforms: Linux and
Windows. My aim was to provide one set of instructions that will work regardless of your platform. To achieve this goal,
file system operations are performed with Linux commands, such as ls and rm. Moreover, the listings start with $ and
paths use / as separator—suggesting that they are prepared for Linux. However, do not worry if you are using Windows.
Just use the bash command interpreter distributed with git and all the commands will work fine.
If you are using a Unix-like system that is different than Linux, some commands (i.e., du or echo) can use different
switches than those that are presented in this book. Therefore, you will need to customize these commands.
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