-## Chapter 2
+## Chapter 2
A tour of git: the basics
### 2.0 Copyright
-This document is a modified version originally known as "Distributed
-revision control with Mercurial" and originally authored by Bryan
-O’Sullivan. The original document was obtained from
+This document is a modified version of a document originally titled
+"Distributed revision control with Mercurial" and originally authored
+by Bryan O’Sullivan. The original document was obtained from
<http://hgbook.red-bean.com/>.
Copyright © 2006, 2007 Bryan O’Sullivan.
* Eliminate line numbers from examples
* Modified to describe git instead of mercurial
+The source of this modified version can be obtained via git:
+
+ git clone git://cworth.org/git/hgbook-git
+
+or
+
+ git clone http://cworth.org/git/hgbook-git
+
+and can be [browsed online](http://git.cworth.org/git/hgbook-git)
+
### 2.1 Installing git on your system
Prebuilt binary packages of git are available for many popular
often git, but is sometimes git-core, (due to an unfortunate name
with git, meaning GNU Interactive Tools).
- * Debian
+ * Debian
apt-get install git-core
- * Fedora Core
+ * Fedora Core
yum install git
- * Gentoo
+ * Gentoo
emerge git
- * OpenSUSE
+ * OpenSUSE
yum install git
- * Ubuntu
+ * Ubuntu
- apt-get install git
+ apt-get install git-core
#### 2.1.2 Mac OS X
development environment necessary to work on improving the msysgit
port of git, and WinGit, a package for installing just git itself
without the development environment, (still in Alpha as of September
-2008).
+2007).
### 2.2 Getting started
yet running version 1.5 or newer, it's highly recommended that you
upgrade.
- $ git version
+ $ git version
git version 1.5.3.2
#### 2.2.1 Built-in help
special. You can rename or delete a repository any time you like,
using either the command line or your file browser.
-#### 2.3.1 Making a local copy of a repository
+#### 2.3.1 Creating a local copy of a remote repository
+
+As suggested, a repository can be copied through normal file-copying
+commands. But git also provides a "git clone" tool for copying a
+repository. This provides a means of copying a repository over the
+network, and is also useful with a local repository since it is much
+more efficient than creating a normal copy, (creating a local clones
+is blazingly fast).
-Copying a repository is just a little bit special. While you could use
-a normal file copying command to make a copy of a repository, it’s
-best to use a built-in command that git provides. This command
-is called “git clone”, because it creates an identical copy of an
-existing repository.
+We've assembled a simple repository that will be used in the examples
+throughout this chapter. Go ahead and clone this repository now so
+that you will be able to follow along:
$ git clone git://cworth.org/git/hello
Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/hello/.git/
change to the project that was recorded. In git terminology, we
call each of these recorded events a commit.
-The fields in a record of output from “git log” are as follows.
+The fields in a record of output from “git log” are as follows.
* commit This field consists of a string of 40 hexadecimal characters.
This is a unique identifier for referring to particular commits.
The default output printed by “git log” is purely a summary; it is
missing a lot of detail.
-Figure [2.1][8] provides a graphical representation of the history of
-the hello repository, to make it a little easier to see which
-direction history is “flowing” in. We’ll be returning to this figure
-several times in this chapter and the chapter that follows.
-
-* * *
-
-![PIC][9]
-
-Figure 2.1:
-Graphical history of the hello repository
-
-* * *
-
#### 2.4.1 Commits, revisions, and talking to other people
As English is a notoriously sloppy language, and computer science has
Another useful syntax is .. which can be used to specify a range of
commits. So "origin..master" specifies everything that has been
-committed to master since it derived from origin.
+committed to master since it diverged from origin.
#### 2.4.3 Viewing specific revisions
Another useful option is -n or --max-count which, unsurprisingly,
limits the maximum number of commits to be displayed.
-#### 2.4.3 More detailed information
+#### 2.4.5 More detailed information
While the default information printed by “git log” is useful if you
already know what you’re looking for, you may need to see more details
$ cd ..
$ git clone hello my-hello
- Initialized empty Git repository in /home/cworth/src/hgbook-git/my-hello/.git/
+ Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/my-hello/.git/
0 blocks
[XXX We say "empty" here, (presumably from the git-init part),
you probably won’t want to use sed; simply use your preferred text
editor to do the same thing.)
- $ sed -i '/printf/a\\tprintf("hello again!\\n");' hello.c
+ $ sed -i '/printf/a\\tprintf("hello again!\\n");' hello.c
The “git status” command will tell us what git knows about the files
in the repository.
then it will be there already). The initial contents of your
.gitconfig should look like this.
- # This is a git configuration file.
+ # This is a git configuration file.
[user]
name = Your Name
email = you@example.com
$ git commit -a
-Note: The -a on the command-line instructs git to commit all changes
-to tracked files. Without this, "git commit" will only commit changes
-that have been previously staged for committing with "git add
-file". The most common usage is to commit with "git commit -a" and
-only use "git add file; git commit" when there is a need to commit
-only some subset of changes that have been made.
+Note: The -a on the command-line instructs git to commit the new
+content of *all* tracked files that have been modified. This is a
+convenience over explicitly listing filenames to be committed on the
+"git commit" command line. It is useful to use "git commit <files>"
+when there is a need to commit only some subset of the files that have
+been modified.
+
+If new files need to be committed for the first time, just use "git
+add <file>" before "git commit -a". If a file needs to be removed,
+just remove it as normal before committing and "git commit -a" will
+notice that---it does not need to be explicitly told about the
+removal.
The editor that the “git commit” command drops us into will contain an
empty line, followed by a number of lines starting with “#”.
### 2.8 Sharing changes
-We mentioned earlier that repositories in Mercurial are
-self-contained. This means that the changeset we just created exists
+We mentioned earlier that repositories in git are
+self-contained. This means that the commit we just created exists
only in our my-hello repository. Let’s look at a few ways that we can
propagate this change into other repositories.
not contain the change we just committed. We’ll call our temporary
repository hello-pull.
- $ cd ..
- $ hg clone hello hello-pull
- 2 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
-
-We’ll use the “hg pull” command to bring changes from my-hello into
-hello-pull. However, blindly pulling unknown changes into a repository
-is a somewhat scary prospect. Mercurial provides the “hg incoming”
-command to tell us what changes the “hg pull” command would pull into
-the repository, without actually pulling the changes in.
-
- $ cd hello-pull
- $ hg incoming ../my-hello
- comparing with ../my-hello
- searching for changes
- changeset: 5:fa1321bf0c80
- tag: tip
- user: Bryan O'Sullivan <bos@serpentine.com>
- date: Sun Jun 17 18:05:50 2007 +0000
- summary: Added an extra line of output
-
-
-(Of course, someone could cause more changesets to appear in the
-repository that we ran “hg incoming” in, before we get a chance to “hg
-pull” the changes, so that we could end up pulling changes that we
-didn’t expect.)
-
-Bringing changes into a repository is a simple matter of running the
-“hg pull” command, and telling it which repository to pull from.
+ $ cd ..
+ $ git clone hello hello-pull
+ Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/hello-pull/.git/
+ 0 blocks
- $ hg tip
- changeset: 4:b57f9a090b62
- tag: tip
- user: Bryan O'Sullivan <bos@serpentine.com>
- date: Tue Sep 06 15:43:07 2005 -0700
- summary: Trim comments.
-
- $ hg pull ../my-hello
- pulling from ../my-hello
- searching for changes
- adding changesets
- adding manifests
- adding file changes
- added 1 changesets with 1 changes to 1 files
- (run 'hg update' to get a working copy)
- $ hg tip
- changeset: 5:fa1321bf0c80
- tag: tip
- user: Bryan O'Sullivan <bos@serpentine.com>
- date: Sun Jun 17 18:05:50 2007 +0000
- summary: Added an extra line of output
-
+We could use the “git pull” command to apply changes from my-hello to
+our master branch in hello-pull. However, blindly pulling unknown
+changes into a repository is a somewhat scary prospect. The "git pull"
+command is coneptually the combination of two commands, "git fetch"
+and "git merge"; we can run those separately to examine the changes
+before applying them locally. First we do the fetch:
-As you can see from the before-and-after output of “hg tip”, we have
-successfully pulled changes into our repository. There remains one
-step before we can see these changes in the working directory.
-
-#### 2.8.2 Updating the working directory
-
-We have so far glossed over the relationship between a repository and
-its working directory. The “hg pull” command that we ran in
-section [2.8.1][12] brought changes into the repository, but if we
-check, there’s no sign of those changes in the working directory. This
-is because “hg pull” does not (by default) touch the working
-directory. Instead, we use the “hg update” command to do this.
-
- $ grep printf hello.c
- printf("hello, world!∖");
- $ hg update tip
- 1 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
- $ grep printf hello.c
- printf("hello, world!∖");
- printf("hello again!∖n");
-
-It might seem a bit strange that “hg pull” doesn’t update the working
-directory automatically. There’s actually a good reason for this: you
-can use “hg update” to update the working directory to the state it
-was in at any revision in the history of the repository. If you had
-the working directory updated to an old revision—to hunt down the
-origin of a bug, say—and ran a “hg pull” which automatically updated
-the working directory to a new revision, you might not be terribly
-happy.
-
-However, since pull-then-update is such a common thing to do,
-Mercurial lets you combine the two by passing the -u option to “hg
-pull”.
-
- hg pull -u
-
-If you look back at the output of “hg pull” in section [2.8.1][12]
-when we ran it without -u, you can see that it printed a helpful
-reminder that we’d have to take an explicit step to update the working
-directory:
-
- (run 'hg update' to get a working copy)
-
-To find out what revision the working directory is at, use the “hg
-parents” command.
-
- $ hg parents
- changeset: 5:fa1321bf0c80
- tag: tip
- user: Bryan O'Sullivan <bos@serpentine.com>
- date: Sun Jun 17 18:05:50 2007 +0000
- summary: Added an extra line of output
+ $ cd hello-pull
+ $ git fetch ../my-hello
+ remote: Generating pack...
+ Unpacking 3 objects...
+ 100% (3/3) done
+ remote: Done counting 5 objects.
+ Result has 3 objects.
+ Deltifying 3 objects...
+ 100% remote: (3/3) done
+ Total 3 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)
+
+The fetched commits (or commit in this case) are available as the name
+FETCH_HEAD. [XXX: Shouldn't git-fetch print that name out to the user
+if the user didn't provide a specific branch name to fetch into.] And
+the difference between what we had before and what exists on
+FETCH_HEAD can easily be examined with the ..FETCH_HEAD range
+notation:
+
+ $ git log ..FETCH_HEAD
+ commit 839b58d021c618bd0e1d336d4d5878a0082672e6
+ Author: Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org>
+ Date: Thu Sep 27 23:55:00 2007 -0700
+ Added an extra line of output and fixed the typo bug.
-If you look back at figure [2.1][8], you’ll see arrows connecting each
-changeset. The node that the arrow leads from in each case is a
-parent, and the node that the arrow leads to is its child. The working
-directory has a parent in just the same way; this is the changeset
-that the working directory currently contains.
-
-To update the working directory to a particular revision, give a
-revision number or changeset ID to the “hg update” command.
-
- $ hg update 2
- 2 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
- $ hg parents
- changeset: 2:057d3c2d823c
- user: Bryan O'Sullivan <bos@serpentine.com>
- date: Tue Sep 06 13:15:43 2005 -0700
- summary: Introduce a typo into hello.c.
-
- $ hg update
- 2 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
+Since these commits actually exist in the local repository now, we
+don't need to fetch or pull them from the remote repository again---we
+can now use "git merge" to apply the previously fetched commits. (A
+mercurial user might notice here that git does not have the race
+condition between "hg incoming" and "hg pull" that mercurial has since
+the commits are fetched only once.)
+
+ $ git merge FETCH_HEAD
+ Updating a1a0e8b..839b58d
+ Fast forward
+ hello.c | 3 ++-
+ 1 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
+
+Notice that "git merge" reports that our branch pointer has been
+updated from a1a0e8b to 839b58d. Also, this is a "fast forward"
+meaning that the new commits are a linear sequence on top of the
+commit we already hand. In other words, there wasn't any divergence
+between these two repositories so no actual "merge" commit was
+created.
+
+This separation of fetch and merge is useful when you need to
+carefully review some changes before applying them. But often you're
+in a situation where you know you trust the remote repository and you
+simply want to pull those changes as conveniently as possible, (no
+extra commands, no typing a magic name like FETCH_HEAD). This is the
+case when the tracking upstream development of a project with git. And
+in that case, the above steps are as simple as just executing "git
+pull". So let's repeat all that the simpler way:
-If you omit an explicit revision, “hg update” will update to the tip
-revision, as shown by the second call to “hg update” in the example
-above.
+ $ cd ..
+ $ git clone hello hello-tracking
+ Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/hello-tracking/.git/
+ 0 blocks
+ $ cd hello-tracking
+ $ git pull ../my-hello
+ remote: Generating pack...
+ remote: Done counting 5 objects.
+ Result has 3 objects.
+ Deltifying 3 objects...
+ Unpacking 3 objects...
+ remote: 100% (3/3) done
+ Total 3 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)
+ 100% (3/3) done
+ Updating a1a0e8b..839b58d
+ Fast forward
+ hello.c | 3 ++-
+ 1 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
+
+It should be plain to see that the "git pull" command really did the
+combined sequence of "git fetch" and "git merge". Also, if you want to
+pull from the same repository you cloned from originally, (which is
+the common case for the upstream-tracking scenario), then "git pull"
+with no explicit repository is suffcient, and it will default to
+pulling from the same repository as the original clone.
+
+[XXX: The structure of the preceding section follows that of the
+original hgbook. But an alternate structure that arranged to pull from
+the originally cloned repository (as would be common) would allow for
+more straightforward use of git's features. For example, instead of
+the silly FETCH_HEAD stuff it would allow for "git fetch" and "git log
+master..origin" to be a very nice replacement for "hg
+incoming". Similarly, below, "git log origin..master" would make a
+nice replacement for "hg outgoing" which is something I didn't offer
+at all. One could also use git's remotes with the myriad repositories
+as used here, but it would require doing things like "git remote add
+<some-name> ../hello-pull" and that seems like a bit much to introduce
+for a turorial of this level. If nothing else, if the above section
+seems a little intimidating, understand that it's because things are
+not presented in the most natural "git way", (and I'm a little too
+tired to fix it tonight).]
+
+Note: Mercurial users who are reading this might wonder if there's a
+need for the equivalent of "hg update" after doing a "git pull". And
+the answer is no. Unlike mercurial, "git pull" and "git merge" will
+automatically update the workind-directory files as necessary.
+
+#### 2.8.2 Checking out previous revisions
+
+It's often useful to examine the working-tree state of some specific
+revision other than the tip of some branch. For example, maybe you
+would like to build a particular tagged version, or maybe you'd like
+to test the behavior of the code before a particular change was
+introduced. To do this, use "git checkout" and pass it the name of any
+revision, (with a branch name, a tag name, or any other commit
+identifier). For example, to examine our project before the original
+typo was introduced:
+
+ $ git checkout 0a633bf5
+ Note: moving to "0a633bf5" which isn't a local branch
+ If you want to create a new branch from this checkout, you may do so
+ (now or later) by using -b with the checkout command again. Example:
+ git checkout -b <new_branch_name>
+ HEAD is now at 0a633bf... Create a makefile
+
+The note that git gives us is to indicate that we are checking out a
+non-branch revision. This is perfectly fine if we are just exploring
+history, but if we actually wanted to use this revision as the basis
+for new commits, we would first have to create a new branch name as it
+describes.
+
+If we were to use "git checkout" with a branch name, then that would
+change the current branch, (meaning that any new commits would advance
+that branch pointer).
+
+For now, let's return back to the tip of the master branch by just
+checking it out again:
+
+ $ git checkout master
+ Previous HEAD position was 0a633bf... Create a makefile
+ Switched to branch "master"
#### 2.8.3 Pushing changes to another repository
-Mercurial lets us push changes to another repository, from the
-repository we’re currently visiting. As with the example of “hg pull”
-above, we’ll create a temporary repository to push our changes into.
-
- $ cd ..
- $ hg clone hello hello-push
- 2 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
-
-The “hg outgoing” command tells us what changes would be pushed into
-another repository.
-
- $ cd my-hello
- $ hg outgoing ../hello-push
- comparing with ../hello-push
- searching for changes
- changeset: 5:fa1321bf0c80
- tag: tip
- user: Bryan O'Sullivan <bos@serpentine.com>
- date: Sun Jun 17 18:05:50 2007 +0000
- summary: Added an extra line of output
-
-
-And the “hg push” command does the actual push.
-
- $ hg push ../hello-push
- pushing to ../hello-push
- searching for changes
- adding changesets
- adding manifests
- adding file changes
- added 1 changesets with 1 changes to 1 files
+Git lets us push changes to another repository, from the repository
+we’re currently visiting. As with previous examples, above, we’ll
+first create a temporary repository to push our changes into. But
+instead of using "git clone", this time we'll use "git init" to make a
+repository from an empty directory. We do this to create a "bare"
+repository which is simply a repository that has no working-directory
+files associated with it. In general, you should only push to bare
+repositories.
-As with “hg pull”, the “hg push” command does not update the working
-directory in the repository that it’s pushing changes into. (Unlike
-“hg pull”, “hg push” does not provide a -u option that updates the
-other repository’s working directory.)
+ $ cd ..
+ $ mkdir hello-push
+ $ cd hello-push
+ $ git --bare init
+ Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/hello-push/
+
+And then we'll go back to our my-hello repository to perform the
+push. Since this is our very first push into this repository we need
+to tell git which branches to push. The easiest way to do this is to
+use --all to indicate all branches:
+
+ $ cd ../my-hello
+ $ git push ../hello-push --all
+ updating 'refs/heads/master'
+ from 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000
+ to 839b58d021c618bd0e1d336d4d5878a0082672e6
+ Generating pack...
+ Done counting 18 objects.
+ Deltifying 18 objects...
+ 100% (18/18) done
+ Writing 18 objects...
+ 100% (18/18) done
+ Total 18 (delta 3), reused 0 (delta 0)
+ Unpacking 18 objects...
+ 100% (18/18) done
+ refs/heads/master: 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 -> 839b58d021c618bd0e1d336d4d5878a0082672e6
+
+For subsequent pushes we don't need to specify --all as "git push"
+will push all branches that exist in both the local and remote
+repositories.
What happens if we try to pull or push changes and the receiving
repository already has those changes? Nothing too exciting.
- $ hg push ../hello-push
- pushing to ../hello-push
- searching for changes
- no changes found
+ $ git push ../hello-push
+ Everything up-to-date
#### 2.8.4 Sharing changes over a network
The commands we have covered in the previous few sections are not
limited to working with local repositories. Each works in exactly the
-same fashion over a network connection; simply pass in a URL instead
-of a local path.
-
- $ hg outgoing http://hg.serpentine.com/tutorial/hello
- comparing with http://hg.serpentine.com/tutorial/hello
- searching for changes
- changeset: 5:fa1321bf0c80
- tag: tip
- user: Bryan O'Sullivan <bos@serpentine.com>
- date: Sun Jun 17 18:05:50 2007 +0000
- summary: Added an extra line of output
-
+same fashion over a network connection; simply pass in a URL or an ssh
+host:/path/name specification instead of a local path.
-In this example, we can see what changes we could push to the remote
-repository, but the repository is understandably not set up to let
-anonymous users push to it.
-
- $ hg push http://hg.serpentine.com/tutorial/hello
- pushing to http://hg.serpentine.com/tutorial/hello
- searching for changes
- ssl required
-
- [1]: http://hgbook.red-bean.com/hgbookch3.html
- [2]: http://hgbook.red-bean.com/hgbookch1.html
- [3]: http://hgbook.red-bean.com/hgbookch1.html#tailhgbookch1.html
- [4]: #tailhgbookch2.html
- [5]: http://hgbook.red-bean.com/hgbook.html#hgbookch2.html
- [6]: http://mercurial.berkwood.com/
- [7]: http://hgbook.red-bean.com/hgbookli4.html#Xweb:macpython
- [8]: #x6-340581
- [9]: hgbookch2_files/tour-history.png
- [10]: http://hgbook.red-bean.com/hgbookch12.html#x16-27100012.4
- [11]: #x6-420002.7.1
- [12]: #x6-490002.8.1
- [13]: http://hgbook.red-bean.com/hgbookch2.html
-
-## Appendix D
+## Appendix D
Open Publication License
Version 1.0, 8 June 1999
projects / hgbook-git / blobdiff