If you are reading this book, you are probably a software developer and a professional. What makes a good professional? Sure, culture and experience are a part of the answer, but there's more: a good professional is one who can master different tools, choose the best tool for the job at hand, and has the necessary discipline to develop good working habits.
Version control is one of the base skills for developers and Git is one of the right tools for the job. However, Git can't be compared to a screwdriver, a simple tool with only a basic function; Git provides a complete toolbox that can help you manage your own code, within which there are also other sharp tools that should be handled with caution.
The final aim of this book is to help you to start using Git and its commands in the safest way possible, to get things done without causing any injuries. Having said this, you will not get the most from Git commands if you do not acquire the right habits; just as is the case with other tools, in the end, it is the craftsman who makes all the difference.
This book will cover all the basic topics of Git, thereby letting you start using it even if you have little or no experience with versioning systems; you only need to know about versioning in general and the Wikipedia-related page is enough for this purpose.
Chapter 1, Getting Started with Git shows you all the (simple) steps you need in order to install Git and do your first commit.
Chapter 2, Git Fundamentals – Working Locally reveals the essence of Git, how it takes care of your files, and how you can manage and organize your code.
Chapter 3, Git Fundamentals – Working Remotely moves your attention to the collaborating side of the tool, explaining the basic commands individually and the options you use when working with remote repositories.
Chapter 4, Git Fundamentals – Niche Concepts, Configurations, and Commands completes the basic set of Git commands you need to know, giving you some more weapons to use in difficult situations.
Chapter 5, Obtaining the Most – Good Commits and Workflows gives you some hints about common methods you can use to organize the source code within Git, thereby helping you to develop good habits that every developer should possess.
Chapter 6, Migrating to Git is a way to give you a hand if you're used to other versioning systems, such as Subversion, to manage the transitional phase from another piece of software to Git.
Chapter 7, Git Resources offers you some hints, which I've taken from my experience, and could prove interesting for you.
To follow the examples used in this book, and make use of them on Git, you only need a computer and a valid Git installation. Git is available for free on every platform (such as Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X). While writing this book, the examples I use are based on the latest version of Git for Windows, which is 1.9.5.
This book is for developers. The book does not require experience in a particular programming language, nor does it require in-depth experience as a software developer. You can read this book easily if you already use another versioning system, but this can be your first approach to a versioning tool, if you at least know the basics of versioning.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Go to the local root folder, C:\Repos, for the repositories "
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
$ git log --oneline
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: " Enabling Windows Explorer integration is generally useful."
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