An Example Git Development Workflow

Excellent introduction. Would have liked a rebasing example but I understand why the complexities of that would make that a bit difficult. Also, pointer to Pro-Git is appreciated. Have started reading it and it’s definitely the ‘next step’ after this video intro. Thanks for your time and effort… charlie

I very much appreciate the feedback @charliem22. For those looking for the next steps, pro git is a fantastic resource as Charlie mentioned. If you’re looking for some scenario based learning I’d suggest Learn Git Branching which will run you through some advanced scenarios including rebases and making sense of branch spaghetti.

Github also has some free labs, but I’ve never used them, would be interested to hear if anybody has.

The GitHub learning labs are very useful. If you are learning coding by yourself and trying to work with GitHub, it is difficult because you have no ‘team’ working with you on a project. The labs work with bots and you will go through examples of how it would be to work with someone in the same repo, pushing changes, making merge requests etc. The downside is that if you do something that is not anticipated by the lab, you get stuck somewhere and cannot finish it. I had to delete the repo I created for one of the learning labs in order to start from scratch and go through the entire lab. Still, I guess no matter how many tutorials or labs you go through, you will only really get a grip on it by working with it on a daily basis. You will however pick up useful information. The RealPython tutorials and videos are very good and cover quite a bit of detail. Thanks for that!

one more video on how to get back deleted file(s) as well as re-setting the master back to earlier version would help!

Excellent refresher. Been out of the game, so this was very informative and concise.

Great tutorial as always, but would have liked to see how to migrate from a local repo to a remote github repo.

Very good and succinct tutorial!

Nice and concise overview of git!

Thanks for the easy and short tutorial. Love it!

This tutorial is a gem. While simple, it really demystifies the basic of github. thanks a lot. What do you recommend as a follow up course to continue building on this basics?

Thanks again!

Hi @Damian. If you are new to git, then I recommend practice more than anything, before digging deeper. If you’re not new, then you could dig into the official docs and find a few gems in there that might help your workflow. git-scm.com/doc

Just completed the video. This course plugged some holes in my git/github knowledge. Still a lot to learn. Software development does not seem so scary. Thanks for your help Paul. Onto the next video

Clear and concise, awesome!

Hey Paul, very well done. Thanks for your effort on this. Maybe as a revision add a lesson the github client? Cheers!

Thanks So Much Paul

Many thanks Paul !!

Thanks for stepping through this! I was able to work with a remote BitBucket repository a teammate had setup. Before this video I simply copied the files. Now I know how to interact properly at the most basic level with a remote repository.

Very nice refresher course. I’ll be pulling down the Pro Git soon. The checkout and branches cleared a few things up for me.

Excellent tutorial Paul, thank you for your work on this. For some reason, I keep getting errors when I tried to do a “git clone https://…” to my private repo. It would respond with a fatal error. When I recreated the repo as a public one, it worked. I was using the same creds each time. Will have to go back and revisit this one as for some of my work projects I cannot make them public. Thanks again!

Thanks for this wonderful tutorial. Each topic was short but concise, and I was able to pull all the real python material down to my VM… much appreciated!

You’ve got a friendly relaxed style, which was refreshing. Thanks for the info. I still don’t see how multiple developers can work on the same project without unknowingly stepping on each other’s work, but I’ll download the ProGit book and see if I can learn by doing.

Thanks Paul! Very good beginner level introduction to Git and Github!

Very helpful, it was the explanantion I needed to fully understand this topic. Thanks!

Thanks Paul! I learned a lot, and finally I can understand the git workflow. Very helpful and you were very instructive.

Git has intimidated me for quite some time but I’ve always wanted to learn how to use it. Although there are quite a lot of things you could have added to the course I think it’s wise that you kept it to these bare essentials. I felt it gave me enough of a base to stand on and learn as I go.

Excellent Work!

I really need the foundation I have tried for a few months to grasp the core concepts need to work with git.

1. You used gitBash since I live in the windows world I have used git to this point. Are there benifits to using the gitBash instead?
2. When I pulled the zen_remote report the .gitignore file did not come over. Is that normal behavior? Do I need a local .gitignore if I have on in the remote repo?

Hi @Glenn Lehmann, glad you found the course helpful. :) About your remaining questions:

Git Bash

I’m not entirely sure I understood your question. If you’re on Windows, like Paul is, then you’ve probably already used Git Bash, unless you’ve been working with a GUI tool for Git.

Here’s a description of Git Bash:

Git Bash is an application for Microsoft Windows environments which provides an emulation layer for a Git command line experience. Bash is an acronym for Bourne Again Shell. A shell is a terminal application used to interface with an operating system through written commands. Bash is a popular default shell on Linux and macOS. Git Bash is a package that installs Bash, some common bash utilities, and Git on a Windows operating system.

So, if you’re on Windows and you’ve followed along with this course and typed Git commands in your shell, then you’re already using Git Bash. It comes with the installation for Windows, or you can get it together with a GUI client in a Git for Windows package.

The .gitignore File

You can commit a .gitignore file to version control and to your remote repository. Generally, this is recommended, so that collaborators know which files you excluded. However, you can also add the .gitignore file to your .gitignore file, which effectively prevents it from being recorded in your VCS.

I’m not sure where you pulled the zen_report from, but if you didn’t get a .gitignore file, then it’s because it wasn’t commited to that repository.

You can have a local .gitignore file, or you can get it as part of a remote repo, when you pull it to your computer. It just depends on whether or not the file was committed to the repository.

Hope that helps clearing up things.

Thanks @Martin Breuss

GitBash

I did a little more research and found a few minor differences. From the Windows PowerShell if I run the Git command everything works fine as far as Git is concerned.

Since I have never used Unix I have not used the Bash editor. As GitBash appears to not only include the git command line, but also a bash emulator for windows. So you can edit files and a few other bash type items.

In my case since I do not us the VM editor, I can do everything I need with Git.

.gitignore

I actually create a new repo on GitHub and allow the .gitignore file to be create automatically. When I cloned the repo to my local drive the .gitignore file was not brought over to my local directory.

Glenn

Hi @Glenn Lehman – gotcha about Git Bash :) Looks like you won’t need it then.

.gitignore

I’ve tried the steps that you described and initialized a new empty repository on GitHub with the suggested .gitignore file by checking the ✅ Add .gitignore option.

Then I pulled the repo to my local machine and looked at the content of the folder. The auto-generated .gitignore file showed up:

➜  Desktop git clone https://github.com/martin-martin/ignoremetest.git
Cloning into 'ignoremetest'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 3, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (3/3), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
Receiving objects: 100% (3/3), done.
remote: Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
➜  Desktop cd ignoremetest 
➜  ignoremetest git:(main) ls -al
total 8
drwxr-xr-x   4 martin  staff   128 Jul 12 09:33 .
drwx------+ 32 martin  staff  1024 Jul 12 09:33 ..
drwxr-xr-x  12 martin  staff   384 Jul 12 09:33 .git
-rw-r--r--   1 martin  staff  1799 Jul 12 09:33 .gitignore

It’s a hidden file, so maybe you need to adapt your folder settings to display hidden files?

Well done! Thank you!

Excellent! I can use GitHub the way its supposed to be used now! Thank You!

Great, I understand Git/GitHub now! Thanks for your hard work.

Nice course. Seems GitHub has changed a few things since this course was published, especially around authentification, but most most of the lessons remain valid.

Thank you for this clear tutorial! I now have a handle on git basics, and now it’s time to practice.