Introduction¶

This is a simple hands-on guide on the basic concepts of SCM (Source Code Management) in Git.

Git, and platforms like GitHub, are not the same thing - even though a lot of people starting out in the scene think so. GitHub is a cloud-based hosting service that provides additional functionality to help you better manage repositories. Git is the version control system that powers it.

The goal is to familiarize you with the concepts, workflows and commands that should suffice to comfortably get you going in the vast majority of the projects. If you would want to manage complex public repositories, with a lot of bells and whistles involved, you may have to do some additional reading.

On a final note, there are sometimes ways to do things similarly in Git, by using commands combined with a load of arguments. The approaches I aim to demonstrate here, are meant to be the easy to wrap your head around, even if that means there may be a little bit more commands to run.

How long does this take?¶

Reading through the whole guide will take you approximately 45 minutes to one hour. Of course, if you are following along, and trying stuff out in the command line in your own repository, it may take a little longer.