1. Getting Started
- 1.1 About Version Control
- 1.2 A Short History of Git
- 1.3 What is Git?
- 1.4 The Command Line
- 1.5 Installing Git
- 1.6 First-Time Git Setup
- 1.7 Getting Help
- 1.8 Summary
2. Git Basics
3. Git Branching
4. Git on the Server
- 4.1 The Protocols
- 4.2 Getting Git on a Server
- 4.3 Generating Your SSH Public Key
- 4.4 Setting Up the Server
- 4.5 Git Daemon
- 4.6 Smart HTTP
- 4.7 GitWeb
- 4.8 GitLab
- 4.9 Third Party Hosted Options
- 4.10 Summary
5. Distributed Git
6. GitHub
7. Git Tools
- 7.1 Revision Selection
- 7.2 Interactive Staging
- 7.3 Stashing and Cleaning
- 7.4 Signing Your Work
- 7.5 Searching
- 7.6 Rewriting History
- 7.7 Reset Demystified
- 7.8 Advanced Merging
- 7.9 Rerere
- 7.10 Debugging with Git
- 7.11 Submodules
- 7.12 Bundling
- 7.13 Replace
- 7.14 Credential Storage
- 7.15 Summary
8. Customizing Git
- 8.1 Git Configuration
- 8.2 Git Attributes
- 8.3 Git Hooks
- 8.4 An Example Git-Enforced Policy
- 8.5 Summary
9. Git and Other Systems
- 9.1 Git as a Client
- 9.2 Migrating to Git
- 9.3 Summary
10. Git Internals
- 10.1 Plumbing and Porcelain
- 10.2 Git Objects
- 10.3 Git References
- 10.4 Packfiles
- 10.5 The Refspec
- 10.6 Transfer Protocols
- 10.7 Maintenance and Data Recovery
- 10.8 Environment Variables
- 10.9 Summary
A1. Appendix A: Git in Other Environments
A2. Appendix B: Embedding Git in your Applications
- A2.1 Command-line Git
- A2.2 Libgit2
- A2.3 JGit
- A2.4 go-git
- A2.5 Dulwich
A3. Appendix C: Git Commands
- A3.1 Setup and Config
- A3.2 Getting and Creating Projects
- A3.3 Basic Snapshotting
- A3.4 Branching and Merging
- A3.5 Sharing and Updating Projects
- A3.6 Inspection and Comparison
- A3.7 Debugging
- A3.8 Patching
- A3.9 Email
- A3.10 External Systems
- A3.11 Administration
- A3.12 Plumbing Commands
1.4 Getting Started - The Command Line
The Command Line
There are a lot of different ways to use Git. There are the original command-line tools, and there are many graphical user interfaces of varying capabilities. For this book, we will be using Git on the command line. For one, the command line is the only place you can run all Git commands — most of the GUIs implement only a partial subset of Git functionality for simplicity. If you know how to run the command-line version, you can probably also figure out how to run the GUI version, while the opposite is not necessarily true. Also, while your choice of graphical client is a matter of personal taste, all users will have the command-line tools installed and available.
So we will expect you to know how to open Terminal in macOS or Command Prompt or PowerShell in Windows. If you don’t know what we’re talking about here, you may need to stop and research that quickly so that you can follow the rest of the examples and descriptions in this book.