Raju Gandhi - Head First Git

• 2021-03-26: First Early Release

You might have played video games that take more than one sitting to complete. As you progress through the game, you win and lose some battles, you might acquire some weaponry or an army. Every so often you might to try more than once to finish a particular challenge. Many games allow you to save your progress. So now, say youve just slayed the fire dragon and next on the agenda is saving the princess and collecting the massive treasure trove.

You decide, just to be safe, to save your progress, and then continue the adventure. This creates a snapshot of the game as it stands right now. The good news is that now, even if you meet an untimely demise when you run into the wretched acid-spitting lizards, you wont have to go back to square one. Instead, you simply reload the snapshot you took earlier, and try again. Fiery dragons be gone!

Version control allows you to do the same with your workit gives you a way to save your progress. You can do a little bit of work, save your progress, and continue working. Now, even if you make a mistake or perhaps, you are not happy with the way you solved a specific problem. You can save your work, and then try a different tack. If you like the new approach you just save your progress again, or you just go back to the old way.

And theres more. Git allows you to confidently collaborate with your fellow developers over the same set of files, without stepping on each others toes. We will get into details about this in later chapters, but for now it should be enough to know this.

You can think of Git as your memory bank, safety net, and collaboration platform all built into one!

Understanding version control, and Git in particularunderstanding what it is capable of, and the effect it has on how we develop software can help make us really, and we mean, really, productive.

Congratulations!

Your company has just been awarded the contract to build HawtDawgthe first-ever dating app for humans furriest best friend. However, its a dog-eat-dog world out there, and with the competition sniffing around, we dont have much time to waste!

Marge: Yes. We should consider using a version control system.

Sangita: I have heard of version control systems, though I have never had a chance to use one. But we dont exactly have a lot of time here.

Marge: Getting started with Git is super easy. You just create a Git repository and you are off to the races.

Sangita: I create a what now?

Marge: A Git repository is a folder that is managed by Git. Let me take a step back. You are going to need to house all the files for this project somewhere on your computer, right?

Sangita: I prefer to keep all relevant files pertaining to my project, including source, build and documentation, in one folder. That way, they are easy to find.

Marge: Great! Once you create that folder, you use Git to initialize a repository inside the folder. Its that simple.

Sangita: And what does that do?.

Marge: Well, whenever you start a new project that you want to manage with Git, you run a Git command that readies the folder so that you can start to use other Git commands inside that folder. Think of it as turning the key in your car to start the engine. Its the first step so you can now start to use your car.

Sangita: Ah! That makes sense.

Marge: Yep. Its just one command, and now your folder is Git enabled. Just like kick-starting your engineyou can now put your project in gear.