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Saravanan Gnanaguru
Saravanan Gnanaguru

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Git 101 - How to Create Your First GitHub Repository

Table of Contents

Introduction

  • This article is a Git-101 starter tutorial. I'm trying to provide the steps to create a repo locally and Git commands to initialize and push the repo changes.
  • I've used GitHub for demo purpose, and it is similar to all Git based source code management tools
  • Also this article inspired by the Git Cheat Sheet section Create Repositories

What are we trying to do

  • A new repository can either be created locally, or an existing repository can be cloned. In case a repository was created locally, user has to initialize and have to push it to GitHub afterwards
  • Use Case for this article is,
    • A GitHub user having a set of files in a directory (test_repo) and needs to be check-in into Git
    • User wants to know, how to create repo in github website and Git commands associated with initializing the local repo and pushing the changes to github

Step 1 Create Repo in Github Website

  • Login into Github
  • Choose create repo
  • Fill-in the details in required field Repository name and optional field Description
  • Choose your repo is public or private
  • Then click Create Repository Create Repo

Step 2 Copy the Repo Url from Address Bar

  • Copy the Git repo url from browser address bar. It will be used later in Step 8 Repo created

Step 3 Create a directory with similar to repo name

mkdir test_repo
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Step 4 Go inside the directory

cd test_repo
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Step 5 Run Git init command to initialize directory

  • We need to download and install Git CLI tool by following Git Installation](https://git-scm.com/downloads) instruction of specific operating system
  • The git init command turns an existing directory into a new Git repository inside the folder you are running this command.
git init
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Step 6 Create branch main

  • After the initiatives of Inclusive naming convention, it is recommended to use branch name as main, instead of master
  • So the below command renames the branch master to main
git branch -m main
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Step 7 Now add the repo to remote Git URL

  • After using the git init command, link the local repository to an empty GitHub repository using the following command:
git remote add origin https://github.com/chefgs/test_repo.git
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Step 8 Create a file

  • Create a file named README.md
echo "## test_repo readme" > README.md
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Step 9 Check repo changes using git status

git status
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Step 10 Add the files to local staging

  • Stages the file in preparation for versioning
git add .
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Step 11 Commit the staged files

  • Records staged files permanently in version history
git commit -m "first commit"
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Step 12 Push the repo changes to Git

  • git push Uploads all local branch commits to GitHub
  • The current branch main has no upstream branch in GitHub, since we initialized a local directory as repo, so use below command for the first time to push the current branch changes and set the remote branch as upstream,
git push --set-upstream origin main
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  • We can now see the repo updated with checked-in files Repo Updated

Next steps

  • Once changes are pushed for the first time, follow-up changes can be pushed by running below commands

Check repo changes using git status

git status
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Add the files to git staging

git add .
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Commit the staged files

git commit -m "new commit message"
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Push the repo changes to Git

git push origin main
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Conclusion

Here is the link to the repo, created as part this article.
In this article we have discussed about,

  1. Creating a repo in Github
  2. Initializing, adding files and pushing changes into GitHub

Looking forward to write more such tutorials regarding Git commands as part Git tutorial series

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