About Git

The official website of git is git-scm.com.

Documentation about git

A little loose, but still in the order from the best reference to the blurrier:

• This first tutorial by the team running Bitbucket (Atlassian),
• www.Atlassian.com/git/ covers lots of things. I like the graphic and English styles of these explanations,
• the official reference book on git-scm.com,
• the help.GitHub.com website is really well designed, and it can sure help you,
• this last tutorial on readwrite.com is quite well written (second part).

Two documents in PDF to download in order to never panic when you will get lost during your first days with git:

• The first one is given by training.GitHub.com,
• The second one is by Atlassian.

Other resources (less useful, but can help):

• en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Git.
• that other unofficial tutorial about the use of both git and Bitbucket,
• this third tutorial is kinda ugly but might be useful.
• This « Start with Git » by Robusta Code.

Note

And how does it work, really, underneath the nice web interface and command line tools? Is it (theoretically) complicated? :red:`Yes.`

My setup

For these two configuration files (on Linux), a global .gitconfig and .gitignore can be in your HOME (~/, or /home/pseudo), and a particular file for every repository can also be created.

• .gitconfig to configure the complete behavior of git (inspired by the one of the Crans developers, thanks to them).
• .gitignore lets say which files should be ignored (ie. not considered) by git when it indicates the unsupervised files.

From the Command Line

You can consult my bash_aliases (also here on Bitbucket.org/lbesson/bin). I defined the following Bash aliases, which allow you to see the changed, deleted or added files:

• alias GitChanged='clear ; git status | grep --color=always 'modified' | less -r' for the modified files,
• alias GitDeleted='clear ; git status | grep --color=always 'deleted' | less -r' for the deleted files,
• alias GitAdded='clear ; git status | grep --color=always 'added' | less -r' for the added files,
• and alias GitSize='clear; git count-objects -v -H | grep "size-pack" | sed s/"size-pack: "/"The size of the repository is "/' displays the storage size of the current repository (e.g. 10.43 MB currently for this project web-sphinx).

These ones are good shortcuts, which by default also launches local compression of the just filed after each operation (on average it saves time):

• alias Push='clear; git push && git gc' to upload the latest changes on the mother repository,
• alias Pull='clear; git gc && git pull && git gc' to download the latest changes from the mother repository,
• alias Commit='clear; git commit -m' to quickly validate the last changes (ie. doing a commit),
• alias Add='git add' to easily add files,
• alias Aggressive='git gc --aggressive' launches an "aggressive" compression,
• alias s='clear ; git status | less -r' is a handy shortcut for the most used git command: git status.

And finally, I have defined an practical alias to synchronize the current project with the deposit mother and its sub-folder on my website.

• alias Sync='clear; echo -e "Synchronizing (git push, gc, send_zamok, send_dpt)..."; git push; git gc --aggressive; make send_zamok; make send_dpt; alert'

For instance, that repository is here locally on my website (publis/ansi-colors). That other one is here locally on my website (publis/Bomberman). And that last one is also here locally on my website (python-demos).

With Sublime Text 3

The following free plugins allow a smooth and easy use of git on Sublime Text 3:

• The small GitGutter will help to visualize the difference of each line of each file regarding the last commited version for the git repository in which it is located (visually great to see the changes since the last commit).
• The wonderful SublimeGit (installable from sublime.wbond.net/packages/SublimeGit). Allows a full integration of git via the control panel. Free but annoys you regularly to ask you buy an (useless) 10$ commercial licence... But it is really awesome, so you will support this.
• GitSavvy seems to be a good free and open-source alternative.

With Bitbucket.org

Like the other hosting services, Bitbucket is free, flexible, powerful, 24h/24 and 7/7 functionnal, and allow to easily publish your code on Internet.

Note

GitHub offers pretty much the same (awesome) features, for free too.

Bitbucket offers in addition to the public repositories and unlimited numbers of private repos. Every repos is limited to 2GB (you really have to want to break the system go beyond!). Signing up is quick, just go to this page https://Bitbucket.org/ ! (Note that Bitbucket can also be used with a Google account, Facebook, GitHub or even with OpenID.)

Once your profile is created, it will look like mine, but more empty: Bitbucket.org/lbesson (see this one for another example Bitbucket.org/jilljenn).

Public deposits are visible to all: Bitbucket.org/lbesson/profile/repositories.

For example, here are some of my repositories:

• Bitbucket.org/lbesson/web-sphinx stores the sources of this website, as for instance the reStructuredText (.rst) source code for that (→ and with a direct link to THAT line),
• Bitbucket.org/lbesson/bin hosts dozens of scripts, especially some in Bash and Python
• Bitbucket.org/lbesson/web-sphinx-scripts stores local versions of all Javascript scripts used by this site,
• Bitbucket.org/lbesson/cv stores the \(\LaTeX{}\) sources for my résumés in English and in French: cv.en.tex or cv.fr.tex,
• Bitbucket.org/lbesson/munstrap a small repository hosting my French translation of the theme Munstap, adaptive and modern theme for Munin.

Further reading is available here en.WikiPedia.org/wiki/Bitbucket.

One last tip?

As with any technical and powerful software, git takes time to adapt. Be persistent, it is worth it.

« I wish you a very good programming experience, and good luck for your geeky projects! »

Additional credit

Thanks to Vincent Cohen-Addad for motivating me to start using git, in Octobre 2012 for the network programming project for my Computer Science (CS) Master of Sciecne (MPRI, course #1-21) on which we worked together.