Git crash course

Thomas Breuer

Lehrstuhl für Algebra und Zahlentheorie, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Summer School, September 06, 2021

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Aim of this talk

• Version control systems: Why do we use them?

• How can we use the version control system git locally?

• How do we use git with the GitHub services,

for the development of OSCAR
(and for this summer school)?

• This is all very basic (but still looks complicated).

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Version control systems – why?
• (for software development, writing papers, . . . )

• record the history of changes over time

• for each revision (timestamp):

Who changed what, when, and why?
• when working alone:
no danger to lose parts of the work (due to the backups),
undo changes
• when working with others:
“merge” contributions from different sides into one source
• “branch”: maintain different versions of one software

• if public: admit contributions from outside

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Git

. . . is a version control system,

. . . is free,

. . . does not need a central server (is “decentralized”),

users’ repositories have the full history information,
the different repositories are equally good,

. . . has GUIs, but here we show just the command line version,

. . . calls the revisions/snapshots commits.

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A live session with git
(commands in order of appearance)

git init,
git status,
git add <<files>>,
git commit,
git log,
git diff,
git diff --cached,
git diff <<old>> <<new>>,
git branch,
git checkout <<branch>>,
git merge <<branch>>,
git stash,
git stash pop.

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GitHub: Use remote repositories

Up to now, we have used git on the local computer only.

For collaborative work,

we use also public remote repositories,
hosted by GitHub.com (https://github.com).
(There are alternatives; we use GitHub.)

The services are free and open.

The code is in git repositories.

We use branching and merging (in principle . . . ).

We interact with GitHub via the command line and via a web interface.

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Proposed GitHub workflow
Do not directly merge your changes into the (central) remote
repository.

Create a so-called pull request from your branch,

which then can be discussed, improved, discussed, . . . ,
and eventually merged.

fork
central - user’s
remote  remote
pull request
6
@ push clone
pull @ ?
@
R
@
user’s
local

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Proposed GitHub workflow: Setup
• Make sure that you have a GitHub account, and that local user
name and e-mail address fit to the values of the account.
Check with git config -l,
set with git config user.name "..." and
git config user.email "...".
• Create/take a central remote repository. (Here:
https://github.com/oscar-system/Summerschool21Exercises.jl)
• Create your own remote copy via fork.
(Click the button in the web page of the repository.)
• Create your own local copy via clone.
(Copy the URL under Code/Clone in the web page,
then execute git clone with this URL on your computer.)
• Notify the central remote repository. On your computer, call:
git remote add upstream <<url-central>>.
(Check with git remote -v.)
Now git pull -r upstream main should work.
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Proposed Github workflow: Repeat
• In your local repository,
• create a new branch (git checkout -b <<name>>),
• edit some files,
• stage the changed files (git add),
• commit the changes (git commit),
• incorporate changes in the remote main branch
since you started editing (git pull -r upstream main;
-r means “rebase”: rewrite the history such that
the remote changes come first and the local changes come on top),
• commit the updated version,
• and then push the new version to origin (git push;
git will propose additional parameters).
• In the web page of the central remote repository,
GitHub will propose to create a pull request.
Check that these are the changes you want to propose;
if not then go to the previous step.
Edit the description if necessary.
Finally, create the pull request.
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Proposed workflow: Repeat

• Wait for comments (reviews).

It may be necessary to get approvals from others
before the pull request can be merged.
• After merging, update main
(git checkout main; git pull -r upstream main,
and delete the local branch (git branch -D <<name>>).

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Some links
git documentation
• man git, man giteveryday, man gittutorial
• Reference Manual: https://git-scm.com/doc
• Cheat sheet:
https://education.github.com/git-cheat-sheet-education.pdf
GitHub documentation
• Documentation: https://docs.github.com
• Tutorial:
https://product.hubspot.com/blog/git-and-github-
tutorial-for-beginners
Markdown syntax
• Documentation:
https://guides.github.com/features/mastering-markdown/
• Cheat sheet:
https://guides.github.com/pdfs/markdown-cheatsheet-online.pdf
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