Workshops/Git Workshop

Programme (draft)

Guided tour

We'll cover the following topics, in a 'follow along on your own laptop' style. By the end of this you'll have a good grounding in everyday Git usage.

• Git is a 'stupid content tracker'
  • Why track content?
  • Key Git concepts
• Tracking your content locally
  • Setting up Git for the first time
  • git init
  • The staging area
  • git add and git commit
  • What's going on? git status and git diff
  • What has been going on? git log and git show
• Branches
  • Why branch?
  • Creating a branch
  • Moving between branches
  • Merging branches
• Working with remotes
  • What is a remote?
  • Cloning from a remote
  • Getting new commits from a remote
  • Sending your commits to a remote
• Getting help (how to read the man pages without going crazy; terminology; other resources)

Miscellaneous/Advanced Grab-bag

Probably more freestyle. For now, these are in no particular order:

• Common/recommended Git workflows
• Using GitHub
• Ignoring files
• Using and abusing the staging area (including stashing)
• Rewriting history (git rebase and friends)
• Finding out where things went wrong: git blame and git bisect
• The reflog
• Tags

Suggestions

Please add ideas for topics you'd like covered!

• Naming and Addressing Things (suggestion from --PhilJones)
  • Often I try to look something up in the git documentation and the terminology can be confusing, if you come from other SCMs.
    • A clear explanation of what is exactly meant by HEAD.
    • How you refer to "the most recent commit" or "last Tuesday's commit" or "the second to last commit made by John that I pulled in this morning".
• As a total newcomer I would favour a ground up, assume no prior knowledge version. Thanks. -- SpikeUK
  • This would be excellent for me as well: I'm using git but only what I've learned/hacked from online a more through grounding would be excellent SamLR
• It'd be great if we could collaboratively compile a cheat sheet during the workshop. I primarily use Hg for personal projects so always find myself having to doc hunt when I intermittently need to do anything with Git beyond clone & pull basics and that's when I get all confuzzled 'cos the docs assume comprehensive knowledge and semi-informed confusion is dangerous with SCMs! -- Anthony
• Related to my above point, maybe we should collate a set of use cases/common workflows. -- Anthony
  • As well as common workflows (good idea!) could we have useful tools etc? SamLR
• How London Hackspace uses Github as a repo, and how to participate in its use. -- Ciemon