What is Git?
Free and open source version control system
What is Version Control system?
● A system that keeps track of our files or projects.
● It allows you to revert selected files to a previous state, revert the entire
project to a previous state, compare changes over time, see who last
modified something so that we can know what might be causing a
problem, or what is the issue, who made it, and when with the details.
Alice’s Code Bob’s code
v1.0.0 v1.0.0
v1.0.1 v1.0.1
v1.0.2 v1.0.2
v1.0.2
2 types of VCS
Centralized Distributed
Centralized version control
Helps you backup, track and synchronize files.
Eg: Subversion &
Team foundation
server
Distributed Version Control Systems
Eg: Git &
Mercurial
Why Git?
● Free
● Open source
● Scalable
● Super Fast
● Cheap branching and merging
What is GitHub?
GitHub is a web-based hosting service for git repositories.
You can use git without Github, but you cannot use GitHub without Git.
Git GitHub
Used for Version Control Used for hosting Git repositories
Installed locally on computer Cloud based
Tracks changes made to a file Provides a web interface to view file
changes
Local Repository
Every VCS tool provides a private workplace as a working copy. Developers make changes in
their private workplace and after commit, these changes become a part of the repository. Git
takes it one step further by providing them a private copy of the whole repository. Users can
perform many operations with this repository such as add file, remove file, rename file, move file,
commit changes, and many more.
Working Directory and Staging Area or Index: An intermediate area where commits can be
formatted and reviewed before completing the commit.
push: send a change to another repository (may require permission)
pull: grab a change from a repository
Basic workflow of Git.
Step 1 − You modify a file from the working
directory.
Step 2 − You add these files to the staging
area.
Step 3 − You perform commit operation that
moves the files from the staging area. After
push operation, it stores the changes Source git-scm.com
permanently to the Git repository.
Blobs
Blob stands for Binary Large Object. Each version of a file is represented by blob. A blob holds the
file data but doesn’t contain any metadata about the file. It is a binary file, and in Git database, it is
named as SHA1 hash of that file. In Git, files are not addressed by names. Everything is
content-addressed.
Trees
Tree is an object, which represents a directory. It holds blobs as well as other sub-directories. A
tree is a binary file that stores references to blobs and trees which are also named as SHA1 hash
of the tree object.
Commits
● Commit holds the current state of the repository. A commit is also named by
SHA1 hash.
● Commit object = a node of the linked list.
● Every commit object has a pointer to the parent commit object.
● From a given commit, you can traverse back by looking at the parent pointer
to view the history of the commit.
● If a commit has multiple parent commits, then that particular commit has been
created by merging two branches.
Git commands
Clone: Bring a repository hosted somewhere like Github into a folder or your local
machine
Add: Track your files and changes in Git
Commit: Save your files in git
Push: Upload your commits to a git repo, like GitHub
Pull: Download changes from a remote repository to your local repository.
GitHub workflow Local Git Workflow
Write code Write code
Stage code changes
Commit code changes
git add
Commit changes
Pull request
git push
Push changes
Git Branching
C1 C2 C3
Master Branch
C1 C2 C3 C4 Merge
C1 C2
Master Branch
Feature Branch
Master Branch
Feature Branch
Hotfix Branch
C1
C1 C2 C3 C4 Merge Merge
C1 C2
Merging
Common Snapshot to
Ancestor merge into
C1 C2 C3 C4 Merge
C1 C2
Snapshot to
Master Branch merge in
Feature Branch
What is a Git Merge Conflict?
Merge Conflicts
While starting the During the merge
merge process process
If there are changes in the working When there is a conflict between the local
directory’s stage area for the current project, branch and the branch being merged.
merging won’t start.
Git resolves as much as possible, but there
In this case, conflicts happen due to pending are things that have to be resolved
changes that need to be stabilized. manually in the conflicted files.
Merge Conflicts
Occasionally, this process doesn’t go smoothly.
If you changed the same part of the same file differently in the two branches
you’re merging, Git won’t be able to merge them cleanly. If your fix for feature
branch modified the same part of a file as the hotfix branch, you’ll get a merge
conflict that looks something like this:
Git hasn’t automatically created a new merge commit. It has paused the process
while you resolve the conflict. If you want to see which files are unmerged at any
point after a merge conflict, you can run git status:
Anything that has merge conflicts and hasn’t been resolved is listed as unmerged.
Git adds standard conflict-resolution markers to the files that have conflicts, so you
can open them manually and resolve those conflicts. Your file contains a section
that looks something like this:
The version in HEAD (your master branch, because that was what you had
checked out when you ran your merge command) is the top part of that block
(everything above the =======), while the version in your feature_branch looks
like everything in the bottom part. In order to resolve the conflict, you have to
either choose one side or the other or merge the contents yourself. For instance,
you might resolve this conflict by replacing the entire block with this:
git commit
Git commands to resolve conflicts
● git log --merge: produce the list of commits that are causing the
conflict.
● git diff: Identify the differences between the states repositories or files.
● git checkout: Used to undo the changes made to the file, or for
changing branches.
● git reset --mixed: Used to undo changes to the working directory and
staging area.
● git merge --abort: Helps in exiting the merge process and returning
back to the state before the merging began.
● git reset: Used at the time of merge conflict to reset the conflicted files
to their original state.
