Git Intro Activity

Participants, in teams of 2-3, work through an activity to learn how to install, configure, and use git to manage local repositories.

Required Resources

• Participants: 2+
• Each team needs:
  • 1 computer with
    • A command-line interface
    • A plaintext editor
    • A browser
    • A working Internet connection with ports open for HTTP and HTTPS

Prerequisite Knowledge and Skills

Participants must be able to:

• Command-line operations:
  • Change working directory (cd)
• Filesystem operations:
  • Create, rename, move, and delete directories and files
• Plaintext editor operations:
  • Edit and save a file

Learning Outcomes

Participants will be able to:

• Install git
• Configure git
• Make and commit changes to a repository
• Add new files to a repository
• Remove a file from a repository
• Modify a file and commit the change
• Stage changes for commit
• Unstage changes for commit
• Explain the purpose of the stage/cache/index
• Inspect the state of a repository
• Undo a commit

Targeted Process Skills

• Critical thinking

Contents

• activity.md - Primary activity that students work together to complete
• cheatsheet.md - Contains common command-line commands, vim commands, and other resources
• presentation.pptx - Provides a little context

Facilitation

• 10 min:
  • Provide overview using presentation.pptx
  • Form teams
  • Handout cheatsheet.md and activity.md, one copy per team
• 30-50 min: Supervise teams as they work through activity.md
• 5-10 min: Discuss responses to key questions; this can be done along the way

FAQ

Here are some common questions that students may ask.

1. Why stage? Staging commits gives developers fine-grain control over what to commit. Here are are some references on the subject:

   • https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/69178/what-is-the-benefit-of-gits-two-stage-commit-process-staging
   • http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4878358/why-would-i-want-stage-before-committing-in-git
   • http://gitolite.com/uses-of-index.html

2. What's the difference between git add . and git add -A .? As of Git 2.0, nothing; they both stage all modifications recursively starting in the current directory.

3. What is the meaning of HEAD? HEAD refers to the branch or commit currently checked out.

4. What is the meaning of ^ in HEAD^? "Parent". HEAD^ is the parent of HEAD.

5. What's the difference between git commit -a and git add . ; git commit? git commit -a will only stage changes in tracked files. git add . adds changes in all files (that are not ignored). So it will add changes in untracked files too.

License

(c) 2016 Darci Burdge and Stoney Jackson SOME RIGHTS RESERVED

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ .