Git & GitHub - Professional Reference Guide

📚 Overview

Git is a distributed version control system that allows you to track changes in your project history and work with different versions efficiently.

GitHub is a cloud-based platform that hosts Git repositories and facilitates collaboration, code sharing, and project management.

🚀 Initial Setup & First Commit

Quick Start Workflow

Initialize a new Git repository
Stage your files
Create your first commit
Connect to remote repository
Push to GitHub

git init

Initialize a new Git repository in the current directory

git add .

Stage all files for commit

git commit -m "Initial commit"

Create your first commit with a descriptive message

git branch -M main

Rename the default branch to 'main'

git remote add origin https://github.com/USERNAME/REPO_NAME.git

Connect your local repository to a remote GitHub repository

git push -u origin main

Push your code to GitHub and set upstream tracking

🔄 Remote Repository Management

⚠️ Important Note

If you created a repository on GitHub with README, license, or .gitignore files, you'll need to pull those changes first before pushing your local code.

git pull origin main --allow-unrelated-histories

Pull remote changes when repositories have unrelated histories

git remote -v

View all configured remote repositories

git remote remove origin

Remove the remote repository connection

🌿 Branch Management

git branch

List all local branches

git branch -a

List all branches (local + remote)

git checkout -b feature-branch

Create and switch to new branch

git switch -c branch-name

Modern way to create and switch

🔀 Merging & Collaboration

git merge feature-branch

Merge branch into current branch

git push -u origin branch-name

Push new branch to remote

git branch -d branch-name

Delete merged branch

git branch -D branch-name

Force delete unmerged branch

📥 Repository Operations

git clone https://github.com/username/repository-name.git

Clone a remote repository to your local machine

📊 Status & History

git status

Check working directory status

git log

View detailed commit history

🎯 Typical Development Workflow

git pull origin main - Get latest changes
git checkout -b feature/new-feature - Create feature branch
Make your changes and save files
git add . - Stage changes
git commit -m "Add new feature" - Commit changes
git push -u origin feature/new-feature - Push to remote
Create Pull Request on GitHub
Merge after review and delete feature branch