What Is a GIT Repository?

The repositories of Github act as essential places for storing the files with maintaining the versions of development. By using GitHub repositories developers can organize, monitor, and save their changes of code to their projects in remote environments. The files in the GitHub repository are imported from the repository into the local server of the user for further updations and modifications in the content of the file. In this article, we will go through a detailed understanding of the GitHub repository and its workflow.

What Is Git?

Git is a distributed version control system that is used to store the source code in software development to track its changes. It facilitates the developers to work collaboratively with teams on repositories to manage the codebase versions i.e., maintaining the history of project modifications. On using git, developers can seamlessly move through the different project states, and merge changes efficiently ensuring a streamlined and organized approach to software development.

Features Of Git

The Efficient local operations, Secured Version control, flexible workflows, and collaborative tools enhanced the developers for effective usage of git in diverse ways. The following sections discuss some of the git features.

1. Performance Of Git

• Local Operations: Git performs most of the operations locally boosting the speed and efficiency.
• Light Weight Branching: It creates and combines the branches quickly enabling the parallel development of programming.
• Optimized Merging: It comes up with effective methods for simplifying the integration of modifications from several branches.

2. Git Security

• Data Integrity: Git comes with tampered resistant version control system ensuring via cryptographic hashing.
• Access Controls: Git facilitates in restricting the user access and prevent from illegal modifications by defining permissions.
• Secure Protocols: It allows in exchanges of secure data over SSH and HTTPS protocols.

3. Flexibility Over Git

• Decentralized Development: Git facilitates the developers to work independently using complete local copies promoting flexibility.
• Branching Strategies: It provides flexible branching techniques that are designed to accommodate a wide range of development process.
• Experimentation And Rollback: On using git, it is simple to conduct experiments in separating the branches and rollback the changes if needed.

Version Control With Git

A VCS or the Version Control System is used to track versions of the files and store them in a specific place known as repository. The process of copying the content from an existing Git Repository with the help of various Git Tools is termed git cloning. Once the cloning process is done, the user gets the complete repository on his local machine. Git by default assumes the work to be done on the repository as a user, once the cloning is done. Users can also create a new repository or delete an existing repository. To delete a repository, the simpler way is to just delete the folder containing the repository. Repositories can be divided into two types based on the usage on a server. These are:

• Bare Repositories: These repositories are used to share the changes that are done by different developers. A user is not allowed to modify this repository or create a new version for this repository based on the modifications done.
• Non-bare Repositories: Non-bare repositories are user-friendly and hence allow the user to create new modifications of files and also create new versions for the repositories. The cloning process by default creates a non-bare repository if any parameter is not specified during the clone operation.

Understanding The Working Tree In A Git Repository

A working tree in a Git Repository is the collection of files which are originated from a certain version of the repository. It helps in tracking the changes done by a specific user on one version of the repository. Whenever an operation is committed by the user, Git will look only for the files which are present in the working area, and not all the modified files. Only the files which are present in the working area are considered for commit operation. The user of the working tree gets to change the files by modifying existing files and removing or creating files. There are a few stages of a file in the working tree of a repository:

• Untracked: In this stage, the Git repository is unable to track the file, which means that the file is never staged nor it is committed. The file is present in the working directory but Git is unaware of its existence.
• Tracked: When the Git repository tracks a file, which means the file is committed but is not staged in the working directory. In this the file changes have been committed at some point in the repository’s history.
• Staged: In this stage, the file is ready to be committed and is placed in the staging area waiting for the next commit. The changes in the file have been marked and to be included in the next commit.
• Modified/Dirty: When the changes are made to the file i.e. the file is modified but the change is not yet staged.

After the changes are done in the working area, the user can either update these changes in the GIT repository or revert the changes.

Overview Of Git Repository Operations

A GIT repository allows performing various operations on it, to create different versions of a project. These operations include the addition of files, creating new repositories, committing an action, deleting a repository, etc. These modifications will result in the creation of different versions of a project.

Git Repository Areas ( Working Area, Stagging Area And Commit Area )

After performing various modifications on a file in the Working Area, GIT needs to follow two more steps to save these changes in the local repository. These steps are:

1. Adding the changes to the Index(Staging Area)
2. Committing the indexed changes into the repository

Moving From Working Area To Stagging Area Of A Git Repository

Adding changes to the Index This process is done by the use of git add command. When the changes have been made in the Working Tree/Area. These changes need to be added to the Staging Area for further modification of the file. git add command adds the file in the local repository. This stages them for the commit process.

Syntax And Usage Of `git add`

$ git add file_name

The following are the different ways to use add command:

• To add all the working area files in the current repository to the stagging Area following command is used:

$ git add .

• To add a specific list of files to the staging area.

$ git add --all

• To add all files with extension .txt of the current directory to a staging area.

$ git add *.txt

• To add all text files with .txt extension of the docs directory to staging area.

$ git add docs/*.txt

• To add all text files of a particular directory(docs) to staging area.

$ git add docs/

• To add all files in a particular directory(docs) to staging area.

$ git add “*.txt”

Moving From Staging Area To Commit Area In A Git Repository

To add text files of entire project to staging area. Committing changes from the Index Committing process is done in the staging area on the files which are added to the Index after git add command is executed. This committing process is done by the use of git commit command. This command commits the staged changes to the local repository.

Syntax And Usage Of `git commit`

$ git commit -m "Add existing file"

• This commit command is used to add any of the tracked files to staging area and commit them by providing a message to remember. 

Cloning And Synchronizing With Remote Repositories

Git allows the users to perform operations on the Repositories by cloning them on the local machine. This will result in the creation of various different copies of the project. These copies are stored on the local machine and hence, the users will not be able to sync their changes with other developers. To overcome this problem, Git allows performing syncing of these local repositories with the remote repositories. This synchronization can be done by the use of two commands in the Git listed as follows:

• push
• pull

Git Push And Pull Commands

Git Push

This command is used to push all the commits of the current repository to the tracked remote repository. This command can be used to push your repository to multiple repositories at once.

Syntax

$ git push -u origin master

To push all the contents of our local repository that belong to the master branch to the server (Global repository).   

Git Pull

Pull command is used to fetch the commits from a remote repository and stores them in the remote branches. There might be a case when other users perform changes on their copy of repositories and upload them with other remote repositories. But in that case, your copy of the repository will become out of date. Hence, to re-synchronize your copy of the repository with the remote repository, the user has to just use the git pull command to fetch the content of the remote repository.

Syntax

$ git pull

Additional Git Commands

Git Status

It is used for checking the status of git repository, i.e., if the files are committed or not, files in staging area or untracked file.

Syntax

$ git status

Git Log

It is used to track all the changes made in the repository, providing the information on contributors and their contributions.

Syntax

$ git log

.gitignore

You may use .gitignore if you want to hide any file when uploading online. Just simply create a .gitignore file, and write all the files names you want to ignore.

Git Merge

It is used to merge two repository, without losing the data. It merge the specified repository to the current repository.

Syntax

$ git merge <repo-name>

Git Checkout

It is used to rollback to previous version of the project which was committed anytime earlier. You can copy to hash-code from git log and use it to rollback.

Syntax

$ git checkout <hash-code>

To know more git commands refer this – Git cheat sheet

Conclusion

In conclusion, this article went on thoroughly exploring the git repositories and their usage in collaborative development and version control. We discussed on covering the every requirement such as cloning and synchronization and how it facilitating the developers with effective processes. The capabilities and adaptiveness of git with security protocols makes it invaluable tool for repository management in software development.

Git Repository – FAQ’s

What Is Git And Why To Use It?

Git is a distributed version control system that is essentially used for tracking the changes of the files in the software development. It ensure in collaboration and management of projects versions effectively.

What Are The Functions Of Git?

The functions of git includes such as maintaining the project history, facilitating collaboration of teams and providing the efficient source code management (SCM).

What Is The Difference Between Git And Github?

Git is a version control system whereas Github is a web based platform that uses Git for hosting the repositories. Github provides the additional features like collaboration of tools and with a graphical interface.

Is Git A Language Or Software?

Git is not a programming language, it is a version control software. It manages and tracks the changes in the source code during the software development.

What Are The 6 Functions Of Git?

The Key 6 functions of Git includes version tracking , branching for parallel development, efficient merging of changes, data integrity, access controls and decentralized development to enhance the flexibility.