This is an introductory tutorial for Git beginners.
Installing Git is not covered in this tutorial. See the official installation instructions for reference.
This tutorial gives an introduction to fundamental concepts in Git and how to use them. It is divided into six chapters, each of which is grouped under its own directory. It is best to read the chapters in order.
You will not become a Git master after reading these chapters. But given a fundamental understanding, you will learn to use Git by practice. I recommend setting up a GitHub account and just playing around with versioning, uploading GitHub, and even conflict resolution.
- It will heavily pay off in work efficiency. You can navigate across multiple versions and manage them easily. Programming is a fragile process. When you make a mistake you want to be able to go back easily.
- It archives your work. No change is lost in the countless code changes when using commits. Especially when syncing your work to remote hosts, like GitHub.
- It enables collaborative working with others and provides useful tools to merge and combine your works.
This tutorial was extracted and modified from the course "The Missing Semester of your CS education" at MIT. On their website and GitHub repository, you can find more lectures regarding essential tools and concepts in computer science.
They released their course as a video series on YouTube. I highly recommend watching it.