This article is the third installment in the “Using Git” series. It assumes that you have read both the installation article and the article on how to use git effectively.

In the world of version control systems, GIT is arguably one of the best in terms of flexbility. It’s very easy to learn the syntax and to figure out how git can best serve your workflow and your environment.

This tutorial will teach you how to create two branches (master and develop) and how to merge code from the development stage to production.

A branch, at its core, is a unique series of code changes with a unique name. Each repository can have one or more branches.

By default, the first branch is called “master”.

Viewing branches

Prior to creating new branches, we want to see all the branches that exist. We can view all existing branches by typing the following: Continue reading How To Use Git Branches →

This article assumes that you have git installed and that your global configuration settings (namely username and email) are properly set. If this is not the case, please refer to the git introduction tutorial.

Git is a very useful piece of software to help streamline development for programming projects. It comes with no language requirements nor file structure requirements, leaving it open for the developers to decide how they want to structure their workflow.

Before using git for your development, it’s a good idea to plan out your workflow. The workflow decision is typically based on the size and scale of your project. To gain a basic understanding of git for now, a simple, single-branch workflow will suffice. By default, the first branch on any git project is called “master”. In a following tutorial in this series, you will learn how to create other branches.

Let’s create our first project and call it “testing”. (If you already have a project that you want to import to git you can skip down to that section.)

Creating your workspace

Just like you want to have a good, clean work environment, the same idea applies to where you do your coding, especially if you’re going to contribute to a number of projects at the same time. A good suggestion might be to have a folder called git in your home directory which has subfolders for each of your individual projects. Continue reading How To Use Git Effectively →