git

Git for Windows

Git for Windows brings the power of Git to Windows. It allows you to work with Git repositories from the Windows command line

How to Install

You can download the installer from the Git for Windows website.

It can also be installed with Chocolatey:

choco install git

How to Configure

Once it is installed, you will need to set your identity, as it is needed for every commit. To set your identity globally, use the following commands:

git config --global user.name "John Doe"
git config --global user.email [email protected]

To set your identity for just one specific repo, browse to the local repo folder in PowerShell and use the —local switch. This can be useful, for instance, if you have some repositories for work and some for personal use. You can set the work repositories to use a work email address, and the personal repositories to use a personal address.

cd c:\git\repo
git config --local user.name "John Doe"
git config --local user.email [email protected]

The default branch name is master. If you want to set the default to something else, run the following:

git config --global init.defaultBranch main

See the git documentation for more configuration options

How to Use

Git has a lot of commands, here are some of the ones I commonly use, with their definition and a link to the documentation:

Command	Definition	Link
git init	Create an empty Git repository or reinitialize an existing one.	https://git-scm.com/docs/git-init
git add	Add file contents to the index	https://git-scm.com/docs/git-add
git commit	Record changes to the repository	https://git-scm.com/docs/git-commit
git status	Show the working tree status	https://git-scm.com/docs/git-status
git branch	List, create, or delete branches	https://git-scm.com/docs/git-branch
git switch	Switch branches	https://git-scm.com/docs/git-switch
git restore	Restore working tree files	https://git-scm.com/docs/git-restore
git checkout	Switch branches or restore working tree files	https://git-scm.com/docs/git-checkout
git merge	Join two or more development histories together	https://git-scm.com/docs/git-merge
git revert	Revert some existing commits	https://git-scm.com/docs/git-revert
git rebase	Reapply commits on top of another base tip	https://git-scm.com/docs/git-rebase

Initialize a New Local Repository

To create a new local repository, browse to the root location for the repo, then run this command

git init

Stage Changes for Commit

When working with files, when you are ready to save the changes you have made so far, you want to stage those changes, which tells Git what changed files you want to commit to the repository. You can either stage just some of the changes so far, by specifying the files you want to commit or stage all the files.

To stage just one file, add it to the staging area by name:

git add filename

To add all changed files to the staging area, place a period after add:

git add .

To Commit Staged Changes

Once you have the files you want to commit staged, you then commit them to the repository. When you commit your changes, you add a commit message, which should explain, in the present tense, what this commit does.

Commits can be easily rolled back, so you can think of a commit kind of like taking a backup of the repository, that you can easily revert to if issues arise.

To commit the changes with just a short message you can add -m to the commit command

git commit -m "Adds some files"

If you want to do a longer commit message, run the command without -m and it should open your default text editor. You can then add a longer commit message, then save and close it to use that message.
Note: The first line of the commit should still be a short overview of the changes, with more details on the following lines.

git commit