Outlining The Purpose Of Git And Its Various Benefits For The Developer Community GitShip Follow Jul 9, 2019 · 4 min read

Git is considered to be one of the coolest technologies available for the developers today. It’s an open source distributed version control system, providing a rich tapestry of functionality to its users. In simple terms, it allows the users to easily add, commit, merge code and also enables them to view the logs of the changes done. This system is ideal for collaborating with all team sizes where the pull requests are viewable by all team members.

To get the purpose of Git clear, one needs to understand the different attributes of this tool first:

•As A Control System: This means Git is a content tracker and can be used to store content like storing codes etc for future references. All this because of the various other features that it provides.

•As A Version Control System: Git is capable of maintaining a history of changes that have happened so far during the course of the project. The stored code keeps on changing as more code is added and is saved as different versions.

•As A Distributed Version Control System: Git comes with remote repository types, which is stored in a server and in the computer of each developer in a local repository. This means that the code is both saved in a central server and the developers’ computers. In case the central server breaks down, the disaster recovery can be made from the local repository.

How does this entire tool works? The Three Tree Architecture Of Git

•Working Directory: A local directory where the code is developed and its different versions are created by committing the version. This step adds to the version history of the code.

•Staging Directory: This directory contains the committed code of the project. Here all the changes that have been made in the code are tracked along with the changes in various branches and then the developer is notified about the conflicts in the code. After this, the conflicts are resolved and the code is pushed to the deployment directory.

•Repository: This is the place where the final code is deployed after all the merging of the codes and then Git creates a final copy on the local machine and also create repositories on the Git platform.

Why You Must Switch To A Version Control System?

Multiple developers work on a project in parallel and it can be difficult to track changes made by each one of them. This is where Git can prove beneficial as it will ensure there are no code conflicts between the developers. Since requirements in projects change often, a version control system can help the developers to revert and go back to the previous code versions with ease. However, at times when there are several projects running in parallel and all have the same codebase, the concept of branching in Git comes into play. So all this makes it worth using.

Similar Link: How Version Control Systems Streamline The DevOps Cycle?

How To Use This System?

For using the system, you need to have certain things installed and available. First, start with installing Git and create an account on your chosen Git platform. Once you have done this, follow the following steps:

Step 1: Creating A Local Git Repository

In your computer, create a folder for your project. Go into that folder and add a local Git repository to your project using the terminal and basic commands.

Step 2: Adding A New File To The Repository

By using any text editor you like or simply running a touch command, add a new file to the project.

Step 3: Code Staging and Committing

Under committing, the code is added to the local repository but before it is done, the code has to be in the staging area, where all files that are to be committed are being tracked. No file can be committed without being added to the staging area.

Once committing and staging of files has been done, you can check the Git Status and Log using the commands, which will give you all the information regarding the modifications done, what files are in the staging area. After this, you can use the Log command to print out all the commits that have been done until now.

Further, there comes branching and merging, which is an advance step in using this system.

So these were the basics of using Git. Now you can go ahead, explore it more, and understand it practically.