Version control allows you to keep a history of files, track changes, and see who made them. Local version control does this for a single user. Centralized version control uses a single server to track multiple user's changes. Distributed version control allows multiple users to work together without relying on a single server and thus a single point of error.
Git is one such DVCS, and it stores files in three states.
- Modified: The file has been changed but not yet committed.
- Staged: The file is flagged as ready to be committed.
- Committed: The file is stored in local database.
You can download a local copy of a repository by using the clone command.
git clone https://github.com/url
The local repository structure corresponds to the three stages of the file.
- Working directory: The files stored as they are being worked on.
- Index: Used for staging.
- Head: The most recent commit.
When adding a file to the local repository, git must be told to track it before it can be staged and committed. This is done by using the command git add filename
If you replace the filename with a *, it will add all the files in the local repository.
Once all files are tracked, you can commit the changes with a message describing what was done using the command
git commit -m "changed these things"
Finally, the changes can be pushed to the remote repository using the command git push.
If you want to save what you are working on without committing changes, you can use the git stash command , then git stash apply to retrieve the changes.