4. Git Offline#
4.1. Absolute Path vs Relative Path#
Navigate to your inclass repo on your terminal
pwd
/c/Users/ayman
Which command will help me navigate between folders?
[ ] ls
[x] cd
[ ] pwd
[ ] mkdir
Note
Remember: cd stands for change directory
What type of path do I use with the command cd?
[ ] absolute path only
[ ] relative path only
[x] Either one will work
Using absolute path means you know how to navigate to your desired folder starting from the root /
The / is the starting point to where all your files and folders can be found
Using you relative path, means that you know how to reach your desired folder relative to where you are right now
How do I get to Tyler 052?
Absolute path: USA/Rhode Island/Kingston/Flag rd/Green house rd/Red building/052 Relative path: leave Ranger 302 (…)/ leave Ranger Hall (…)/ Through quad/ pass by engineering/ Red building/ 052
The / between folder names means “from here, go to”
We can separate the cd command that contains / into multiple commands
cd Documents/
cd systems/
pwd
/c/Users/ayman/Documents/systems
Let’s try another way
cd ../../
pwd
/c/Users/ayman
cd Documents/systems/
pwd
/c/Users/ayman/Documents/systems
We got to the same destination
Watch your steps carefully for this one (Don’t hit Enter)
cd gh-
Hit Tab
cd gh-inclass-AymanBx
Now you can hit Enter
Note
The terminal determined that the existing folders/files that begin with “gh-” are limited to only one and helped you complete it with the press of tab
getting to GitHub from your local system
Now on the other side of things, navigate to your inclass repo on GitHub
the step below requires that you have the gh CLI.
gh repo view --web
What files/folders can you see on there?
.github/workflows
How many branches do you have?
main
1-create-an-about-file
Select the 1-create-an-about-file
Same files so far (No changes made yet)
Back to your terminal
Let’s go back to comparing files between online and local repos
ls -a
Note
We used -a as an option for showing us hidden files/folders (anything that starts with a .)
. .git
.. .github
We’ll notice a few things here
We have three extra files/folders
We know what .. refers to by now. It’s a pointer to the parent direcctory
The . is a pointer to where I am right now (the current directory)
Let’s test out this theory
pwd
/c/Users/ayman/Documents/systems/gh-inclass-AymanBx
cd .
pwd
/c/Users/ayman/Documents/systems/gh-inclass-AymanBx
Our place didn’t change. It checks out!
4.2. .git#
The third difference was the .git folder
.git folder is created by the git tool that we use on our terminal to hold special information about the project we’re working on
Everytime we start a command with the word git we’re calling that tool and then telling it what we want it to do
So far we saw **git** status and **git** fetch
status & fetch were the commands that we asked git to execute
.git is a black box ( until furhter notice ;-) )
It holds tracking information about what changes were made locally and online
We use git fetch to update the .git box with changes that happed on the GitHub repo
Let’s try it
git fetch
If you got nothing then your .git box is already up to date with the online repo (project)
Check the current status of your project
git status
On branch 1-create-an-about-file
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/1-create-an-about-file'.
nothing to commit, working tree clean
git status is your friend, we will use it all the time to keep track of our movements
Notice two key lines here
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/1-create-an-about-file'. is telling you that your local project matches the online one at the moment (as far as it knows)
More importantly, nothing to commit, working tree clean is telling you that your local repo (everything out side of the .git folder) matches the tracking information of git (everything inside the .git folder)
Much more on that later
Lastly, one more small thing we noticed
Github showed us .github/workflows whereas ls -a only showed my .github
As discussed, the / tells us that this there is a file/folder within a folder
Github combined them in one because there are no other files/folders on the .github folder
How do we prove it?
ls .github
workflows/
Listing the contents of .github showed us that it contains the folder “workflows” with it
Note
Conclusion: The ls command can take an argument that is a path and it will list the contents of the folder passed in that path for us
4.3. Creating a file on the terminal#
The touch command creates an empty file.
touch about.md
We can use ls to see our working directory now.
ls
about.md
git status
On branch 1-create-an-about-file
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/1-create-an-about-file'.
Untracked files:
(use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
about.md
nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)
Notice: Working tree is not clean anymore.
There is one “untracked file”
This means the working directory (everything outside .git) had changes but those changes were not added to the .git box to be tracked
nano about.md
What year are you in? When do you expect to graduate?
Ctrl + s (Only windows users) Ctrl + x Enter (Only mac users would need this)
we used the nano text editor. nano is simpler than other text editors that tend to be more popular among experts, vim and emacs. Getting comfortable with nano will get you used to the ideas, without putting as much burden on your memory. This will set you up to learn those later, if you need a more powerful terminal text editor.
We put some content in the file, any content then saved and exit.
On the nano editor the ^ stands for control.
and we can look at the contents of it.
Now we will check again with git.
cat concatenates the contents of a file to standard out, where all of the content that is shown on the terminal is.
Note
Standard out is a special file in your device that your programs/commands executed will put their output into. The terminal prints the content of standard out (aka: std out), hence we get the output printed on the terminal
cat about.md
and we can see the contents
git status
On branch 1-create-an-about-file
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/1-create-an-about-file'.
Untracked files:
(use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
about.md
nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)
4.4. git add#
In this case both say to git add to track or to include in what will be committed. Under untracked files is it says git add <file>..., in our case this would look like git add about.md. However, remember we learned that the . that is always in every directory is a special “file” that points to the current directory, so we can use that to add all files. Since we have only one, the two are equivalent, and the . is a common shortcut, because most of the time we want to add everything we have recently worked on in a single commit.
git add puts a file in the “staging area” we can use the staging area to group files together and put changes to multiple files in a single commit. This is something we cannot do on GitHub in the browser, in order to save changes at all, we have to commit. Offline, we can save changes to our computer without commiting at all, and we can group many changes into a single commit.
We will use . as our “file” to stage everything in the current working directory.
git add .
And again, we will check in with git
git status
On branch 1-create-an-about-file
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/1-create-an-about-file'.
Changes to be committed:
(use "git restore --staged <file>..." to unstage)
new file: about
Now that one file is marked as a new file and it is in the group “to be committed”. Git also tells us how to undo the thing we just did.
Notice: git tells you that if you changed your mind on that file and you don’t want it staged to be commited to the next “checkpoint” anymore, you can simply take it out of the staging area using the command git restore --staged <file_name>
Try this yourself
Try making a change, adding it, then restoring it. Use git status to see what happens at each point
4.5. git commit#
Next, we will commit the file. We use git commit for this. The -m option allows us to put our commit message dirctly on the line when we commit. Notice that unlike commiting on GitHub, we do not choose our branch with the git commit command. We have to be “on” that branch before the git commit.
Note
A commit is a “checkpoint” in your project that you want to save, to be able to go back at any point in time. A commit saves the status of all the files in the project that had been modified since the last check point and staged for the new commit
git commit -m "create about - closes #1"
We used a closing keyword so that it will close the issue.
Warning
When you make your first commit you will need to do some config steps to set your email and user name.
[1-create-an-about-file c7375fa] create about - closes #1
1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)
create mode 100644 about.md
one more check
git status
On branch 1-create-a-readme
Your branch is ahead of 'origin/1-create-an-about-file' by 1 commit.
(use "git push" to publish your local commits)
nothing to commit, working tree clean
Note
Now your working tree is clean again, but your local branch (as reflected inside the black box .git) now looks different from what’s on the online GitHub repo (Sometimes referred to as the “Upstream”)
4.6. git push#
Git suggests that we use the push command to update the online repo with the local one.
And push to send to github.com
git push
Enumerating objects: 4, done.
Counting objects: 100% (4/4), done.
Delta compression using up to 12 threads
Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 341 bytes | 341.00 KiB/s, done.
Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0 (from 0)
To https://github.com/compsys-progtools/gh-inclass-AymanBx
98ca2d6..9e8a
Now check out your online repo. Make sure your on the “1-create-an-about-file” branch
about.md should exist now on there!
4.7. Summary#
Another way to think abut things (and adds some additional examples to help you differentiate between categories and examples of categories)
Today’s bash commands:
command |
explanation |
|---|---|
|
print working directory |
|
change directory to path |
|
make a directory called name |
|
list, show the files |
|
create an empty file |
We also learned some git commands
command |
explanation |
|---|---|
|
describe what relationship between the working directory and git |
|
make a new folder locally and download the repo into it from url, set up a remote to url |
|
add file to staging area |
|
commit using the message in quotes |
|
send to the remote |
4.8. Prepare for next class#
[ ] Make sure you’re inclass repo has two branches on github
main&1-create-an-about-file[ ] Make sure you’re inclass repo has two branches locally as well using the command
git branchon your terminal when you’re inside the inclass folder[ ] Make sure you can see the
about.mdfile on github when you select the1-create-an-about-filebranch and not the main branch
4.9. Badges#
[ ] Review the notes from 02-04
[ ] Ask questions about what we did in the Experience report for 02-04
[ ] Review the notes from 02-04
[ ] Ask questions about what we did in the Experience report for 02-04
[ ] In your own words, explain the process of making changes to a repo localy and then pushing them to your online repo in a file called local-change.md