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            "text": "# gittutorial(7) (man)\n\n**Summary:** gittutorial - A tutorial introduction to Git\n\n**Synopsis:** git *\n\n## See Also\n\n- gittutorial-2(7)\n- gitcvs-migration(7)\n- gitcore-tutorial(7)\n- gitglossary(7)\n- git-help(1)\n- gitworkflows(7)\n- giteveryday(7)\n\n## Section Outline\n\n- **NAME** (2 lines)\n- **SYNOPSIS** (3 lines)\n- **DESCRIPTION** (27 lines)\n- **IMPORTING A NEW PROJECT** (31 lines)\n- **MAKING CHANGES** (49 lines)\n- **GIT TRACKS CONTENT NOT FILES** (5 lines)\n- **VIEWING PROJECT HISTORY** (15 lines)\n- **MANAGING BRANCHES** (80 lines)\n- **USING GIT FOR COLLABORATION** (145 lines)\n- **EXPLORING HISTORY** (129 lines)\n- **NEXT STEPS** (32 lines)\n- **SEE ALSO** (3 lines)\n- **GIT** (2 lines)\n- **NOTES** (6 lines)\n\n## Full Content\n\n### NAME\n\ngittutorial - A tutorial introduction to Git\n\n### SYNOPSIS\n\ngit *\n\n### DESCRIPTION\n\nThis tutorial explains how to import a new project into Git, make changes to it, and share\nchanges with other developers.\n\nIf you are instead primarily interested in using Git to fetch a project, for example, to test\nthe latest version, you may prefer to start with the first two chapters of The Git User’’s\nManual[1].\n\nFirst, note that you can get documentation for a command such as git log --graph with:\n\n$ man git-log\n\n\nor:\n\n$ git help log\n\n\nWith the latter, you can use the manual viewer of your choice; see git-help(1) for more\ninformation.\n\nIt is a good idea to introduce yourself to Git with your name and public email address before\ndoing any operation. The easiest way to do so is:\n\n$ git config --global user.name \"Your Name Comes Here\"\n$ git config --global user.email you@yourdomain.example.com\n\n### IMPORTING A NEW PROJECT\n\nAssume you have a tarball project.tar.gz with your initial work. You can place it under Git\nrevision control as follows.\n\n$ tar xzf project.tar.gz\n$ cd project\n$ git init\n\n\nGit will reply\n\nInitialized empty Git repository in .git/\n\n\nYou’ve now initialized the working directory—you may notice a new directory created, named\n\".git\".\n\nNext, tell Git to take a snapshot of the contents of all files under the current directory\n(note the .), with git add:\n\n$ git add .\n\n\nThis snapshot is now stored in a temporary staging area which Git calls the \"index\". You can\npermanently store the contents of the index in the repository with git commit:\n\n$ git commit\n\n\nThis will prompt you for a commit message. You’ve now stored the first version of your\nproject in Git.\n\n### MAKING CHANGES\n\nModify some files, then add their updated contents to the index:\n\n$ git add file1 file2 file3\n\n\nYou are now ready to commit. You can see what is about to be committed using git diff with\nthe --cached option:\n\n$ git diff --cached\n\n\n(Without --cached, git diff will show you any changes that you’ve made but not yet added to\nthe index.) You can also get a brief summary of the situation with git status:\n\n$ git status\nOn branch master\nChanges to be committed:\nYour branch is up to date with 'origin/master'.\n(use \"git restore --staged <file>...\" to unstage)\n\nmodified:   file1\nmodified:   file2\nmodified:   file3\n\n\nIf you need to make any further adjustments, do so now, and then add any newly modified\ncontent to the index. Finally, commit your changes with:\n\n$ git commit\n\n\nThis will again prompt you for a message describing the change, and then record a new version\nof the project.\n\nAlternatively, instead of running git add beforehand, you can use\n\n$ git commit -a\n\n\nwhich will automatically notice any modified (but not new) files, add them to the index, and\ncommit, all in one step.\n\nA note on commit messages: Though not required, it’s a good idea to begin the commit message\nwith a single short (less than 50 character) line summarizing the change, followed by a blank\nline and then a more thorough description. The text up to the first blank line in a commit\nmessage is treated as the commit title, and that title is used throughout Git. For example,\ngit-format-patch(1) turns a commit into email, and it uses the title on the Subject line and\nthe rest of the commit in the body.\n\n### GIT TRACKS CONTENT NOT FILES\n\nMany revision control systems provide an add command that tells the system to start tracking\nchanges to a new file. Git’s add command does something simpler and more powerful: git add is\nused both for new and newly modified files, and in both cases it takes a snapshot of the\ngiven files and stages that content in the index, ready for inclusion in the next commit.\n\n### VIEWING PROJECT HISTORY\n\nAt any point you can view the history of your changes using\n\n$ git log\n\n\nIf you also want to see complete diffs at each step, use\n\n$ git log -p\n\n\nOften the overview of the change is useful to get a feel of each step\n\n$ git log --stat --summary\n\n### MANAGING BRANCHES\n\nA single Git repository can maintain multiple branches of development. To create a new branch\nnamed \"experimental\", use\n\n$ git branch experimental\n\n\nIf you now run\n\n$ git branch\n\n\nyou’ll get a list of all existing branches:\n\nexperimental\n* master\n\n\nThe \"experimental\" branch is the one you just created, and the \"master\" branch is a default\nbranch that was created for you automatically. The asterisk marks the branch you are\ncurrently on; type\n\n$ git switch experimental\n\n\nto switch to the experimental branch. Now edit a file, commit the change, and switch back to\nthe master branch:\n\n(edit file)\n$ git commit -a\n$ git switch master\n\n\nCheck that the change you made is no longer visible, since it was made on the experimental\nbranch and you’re back on the master branch.\n\nYou can make a different change on the master branch:\n\n(edit file)\n$ git commit -a\n\n\nat this point the two branches have diverged, with different changes made in each. To merge\nthe changes made in experimental into master, run\n\n$ git merge experimental\n\n\nIf the changes don’t conflict, you’re done. If there are conflicts, markers will be left in\nthe problematic files showing the conflict;\n\n$ git diff\n\n\nwill show this. Once you’ve edited the files to resolve the conflicts,\n\n$ git commit -a\n\n\nwill commit the result of the merge. Finally,\n\n$ gitk\n\n\nwill show a nice graphical representation of the resulting history.\n\nAt this point you could delete the experimental branch with\n\n$ git branch -d experimental\n\n\nThis command ensures that the changes in the experimental branch are already in the current\nbranch.\n\nIf you develop on a branch crazy-idea, then regret it, you can always delete the branch with\n\n$ git branch -D crazy-idea\n\n\nBranches are cheap and easy, so this is a good way to try something out.\n\n### USING GIT FOR COLLABORATION\n\nSuppose that Alice has started a new project with a Git repository in /home/alice/project,\nand that Bob, who has a home directory on the same machine, wants to contribute.\n\nBob begins with:\n\nbob$ git clone /home/alice/project myrepo\n\n\nThis creates a new directory \"myrepo\" containing a clone of Alice’s repository. The clone is\non an equal footing with the original project, possessing its own copy of the original\nproject’s history.\n\nBob then makes some changes and commits them:\n\n(edit files)\nbob$ git commit -a\n(repeat as necessary)\n\n\nWhen he’s ready, he tells Alice to pull changes from the repository at /home/bob/myrepo. She\ndoes this with:\n\nalice$ cd /home/alice/project\nalice$ git pull /home/bob/myrepo master\n\n\nThis merges the changes from Bob’s \"master\" branch into Alice’s current branch. If Alice has\nmade her own changes in the meantime, then she may need to manually fix any conflicts.\n\nThe \"pull\" command thus performs two operations: it fetches changes from a remote branch,\nthen merges them into the current branch.\n\nNote that in general, Alice would want her local changes committed before initiating this\n\"pull\". If Bob’s work conflicts with what Alice did since their histories forked, Alice will\nuse her working tree and the index to resolve conflicts, and existing local changes will\ninterfere with the conflict resolution process (Git will still perform the fetch but will\nrefuse to merge — Alice will have to get rid of her local changes in some way and pull again\nwhen this happens).\n\nAlice can peek at what Bob did without merging first, using the \"fetch\" command; this allows\nAlice to inspect what Bob did, using a special symbol \"FETCHHEAD\", in order to determine if\nhe has anything worth pulling, like this:\n\nalice$ git fetch /home/bob/myrepo master\nalice$ git log -p HEAD..FETCHHEAD\n\n\nThis operation is safe even if Alice has uncommitted local changes. The range notation\n\"HEAD..FETCHHEAD\" means \"show everything that is reachable from the FETCHHEAD but exclude\nanything that is reachable from HEAD\". Alice already knows everything that leads to her\ncurrent state (HEAD), and reviews what Bob has in his state (FETCHHEAD) that she has not\nseen with this command.\n\nIf Alice wants to visualize what Bob did since their histories forked she can issue the\nfollowing command:\n\n$ gitk HEAD..FETCHHEAD\n\n\nThis uses the same two-dot range notation we saw earlier with git log.\n\nAlice may want to view what both of them did since they forked. She can use three-dot form\ninstead of the two-dot form:\n\n$ gitk HEAD...FETCHHEAD\n\n\nThis means \"show everything that is reachable from either one, but exclude anything that is\nreachable from both of them\".\n\nPlease note that these range notation can be used with both gitk and \"git log\".\n\nAfter inspecting what Bob did, if there is nothing urgent, Alice may decide to continue\nworking without pulling from Bob. If Bob’s history does have something Alice would\nimmediately need, Alice may choose to stash her work-in-progress first, do a \"pull\", and then\nfinally unstash her work-in-progress on top of the resulting history.\n\nWhen you are working in a small closely knit group, it is not unusual to interact with the\nsame repository over and over again. By defining remote repository shorthand, you can make it\neasier:\n\nalice$ git remote add bob /home/bob/myrepo\n\n\nWith this, Alice can perform the first part of the \"pull\" operation alone using the git fetch\ncommand without merging them with her own branch, using:\n\nalice$ git fetch bob\n\n\nUnlike the longhand form, when Alice fetches from Bob using a remote repository shorthand set\nup with git remote, what was fetched is stored in a remote-tracking branch, in this case\nbob/master. So after this:\n\nalice$ git log -p master..bob/master\n\n\nshows a list of all the changes that Bob made since he branched from Alice’s master branch.\n\nAfter examining those changes, Alice could merge the changes into her master branch:\n\nalice$ git merge bob/master\n\n\nThis merge can also be done by pulling from her own remote-tracking branch, like this:\n\nalice$ git pull . remotes/bob/master\n\n\nNote that git pull always merges into the current branch, regardless of what else is given on\nthe command line.\n\nLater, Bob can update his repo with Alice’s latest changes using\n\nbob$ git pull\n\n\nNote that he doesn’t need to give the path to Alice’s repository; when Bob cloned Alice’s\nrepository, Git stored the location of her repository in the repository configuration, and\nthat location is used for pulls:\n\nbob$ git config --get remote.origin.url\n/home/alice/project\n\n\n(The complete configuration created by git clone is visible using git config -l, and the git-\nconfig(1) man page explains the meaning of each option.)\n\nGit also keeps a pristine copy of Alice’s master branch under the name \"origin/master\":\n\nbob$ git branch -r\norigin/master\n\n\nIf Bob later decides to work from a different host, he can still perform clones and pulls\nusing the ssh protocol:\n\nbob$ git clone alice.org:/home/alice/project myrepo\n\n\nAlternatively, Git has a native protocol, or can use http; see git-pull(1) for details.\n\nGit can also be used in a CVS-like mode, with a central repository that various users push\nchanges to; see git-push(1) and gitcvs-migration(7).\n\n### EXPLORING HISTORY\n\nGit history is represented as a series of interrelated commits. We have already seen that the\ngit log command can list those commits. Note that first line of each git log entry also gives\na name for the commit:\n\n$ git log\ncommit c82a22c39cbc32576f64f5c6b3f24b99ea8149c7\nAuthor: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>\nDate:   Tue May 16 17:18:22 2006 -0700\n\nmerge-base: Clarify the comments on post processing.\n\n\nWe can give this name to git show to see the details about this commit.\n\n$ git show c82a22c39cbc32576f64f5c6b3f24b99ea8149c7\n\n\nBut there are other ways to refer to commits. You can use any initial part of the name that\nis long enough to uniquely identify the commit:\n\n$ git show c82a22c39c   # the first few characters of the name are\n# usually enough\n$ git show HEAD         # the tip of the current branch\n$ git show experimental # the tip of the \"experimental\" branch\n\n\nEvery commit usually has one \"parent\" commit which points to the previous state of the\nproject:\n\n$ git show HEAD^  # to see the parent of HEAD\n$ git show HEAD^^ # to see the grandparent of HEAD\n$ git show HEAD~4 # to see the great-great grandparent of HEAD\n\n\nNote that merge commits may have more than one parent:\n\n$ git show HEAD^1 # show the first parent of HEAD (same as HEAD^)\n$ git show HEAD^2 # show the second parent of HEAD\n\n\nYou can also give commits names of your own; after running\n\n$ git tag v2.5 1b2e1d63ff\n\n\nyou can refer to 1b2e1d63ff by the name \"v2.5\". If you intend to share this name with other\npeople (for example, to identify a release version), you should create a \"tag\" object, and\nperhaps sign it; see git-tag(1) for details.\n\nAny Git command that needs to know a commit can take any of these names. For example:\n\n$ git diff v2.5 HEAD     # compare the current HEAD to v2.5\n$ git branch stable v2.5 # start a new branch named \"stable\" based\n# at v2.5\n$ git reset --hard HEAD^ # reset your current branch and working\n# directory to its state at HEAD^\n\n\nBe careful with that last command: in addition to losing any changes in the working\ndirectory, it will also remove all later commits from this branch. If this branch is the only\nbranch containing those commits, they will be lost. Also, don’t use git reset on a\npublicly-visible branch that other developers pull from, as it will force needless merges on\nother developers to clean up the history. If you need to undo changes that you have pushed,\nuse git revert instead.\n\nThe git grep command can search for strings in any version of your project, so\n\n$ git grep \"hello\" v2.5\n\n\nsearches for all occurrences of \"hello\" in v2.5.\n\nIf you leave out the commit name, git grep will search any of the files it manages in your\ncurrent directory. So\n\n$ git grep \"hello\"\n\n\nis a quick way to search just the files that are tracked by Git.\n\nMany Git commands also take sets of commits, which can be specified in a number of ways. Here\nare some examples with git log:\n\n$ git log v2.5..v2.6            # commits between v2.5 and v2.6\n$ git log v2.5..                # commits since v2.5\n$ git log --since=\"2 weeks ago\" # commits from the last 2 weeks\n$ git log v2.5.. Makefile       # commits since v2.5 which modify\n# Makefile\n\n\nYou can also give git log a \"range\" of commits where the first is not necessarily an ancestor\nof the second; for example, if the tips of the branches \"stable\" and \"master\" diverged from a\ncommon commit some time ago, then\n\n$ git log stable..master\n\n\nwill list commits made in the master branch but not in the stable branch, while\n\n$ git log master..stable\n\n\nwill show the list of commits made on the stable branch but not the master branch.\n\nThe git log command has a weakness: it must present commits in a list. When the history has\nlines of development that diverged and then merged back together, the order in which git log\npresents those commits is meaningless.\n\nMost projects with multiple contributors (such as the Linux kernel, or Git itself) have\nfrequent merges, and gitk does a better job of visualizing their history. For example,\n\n$ gitk --since=\"2 weeks ago\" drivers/\n\n\nallows you to browse any commits from the last 2 weeks of commits that modified files under\nthe \"drivers\" directory. (Note: you can adjust gitk’s fonts by holding down the control key\nwhile pressing \"-\" or \"+\".)\n\nFinally, most commands that take filenames will optionally allow you to precede any filename\nby a commit, to specify a particular version of the file:\n\n$ git diff v2.5:Makefile HEAD:Makefile.in\n\n\nYou can also use git show to see any such file:\n\n$ git show v2.5:Makefile\n\n### NEXT STEPS\n\nThis tutorial should be enough to perform basic distributed revision control for your\nprojects. However, to fully understand the depth and power of Git you need to understand two\nsimple ideas on which it is based:\n\n•   The object database is the rather elegant system used to store the history of your\nproject—files, directories, and commits.\n\n•   The index file is a cache of the state of a directory tree, used to create commits, check\nout working directories, and hold the various trees involved in a merge.\n\nPart two of this tutorial explains the object database, the index file, and a few other odds\nand ends that you’ll need to make the most of Git. You can find it at gittutorial-2(7).\n\nIf you don’t want to continue with that right away, a few other digressions that may be\ninteresting at this point are:\n\n•   git-format-patch(1), git-am(1): These convert series of git commits into emailed patches,\nand vice versa, useful for projects such as the Linux kernel which rely heavily on\nemailed patches.\n\n•   git-bisect(1): When there is a regression in your project, one way to track down the bug\nis by searching through the history to find the exact commit that’s to blame. Git bisect\ncan help you perform a binary search for that commit. It is smart enough to perform a\nclose-to-optimal search even in the case of complex non-linear history with lots of\nmerged branches.\n\n•   gitworkflows(7): Gives an overview of recommended workflows.\n\n•   giteveryday(7): Everyday Git with 20 Commands Or So.\n\n•   gitcvs-migration(7): Git for CVS users.\n\n### SEE ALSO\n\ngittutorial-2(7), gitcvs-migration(7), gitcore-tutorial(7), gitglossary(7), git-help(1),\ngitworkflows(7), giteveryday(7), The Git User’’s Manual[1]\n\n### GIT\n\nPart of the git(1) suite\n\n### NOTES\n\n1. The Git User’s Manual\nfile:///usr/share/doc/git/html/user-manual.html\n\n\n\nGit 2.34.1                                   02/26/2026                               GITTUTORIAL(7)\n\n"
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                "name": "DESCRIPTION",
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                "name": "IMPORTING A NEW PROJECT",
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