Creating your first local repository

Folders and files are not version-controlled until we explicitly ask them to be. This process is called initialising a repository.

Firstly we need to create a folder to hold our files. We do this at the git command prompt using the following syntax:

mkdir -p gitrepositories/foss4gukdontbeafraid

This creates a folder called gitrepositories and a sub-folder called foss4gukdontbeafraid in one step.

Where is this?

If you don't specify a location for this folder, then it will use a default location as follows:

• Linux: /home/yourname
• Windows using Git Bash: C:\Users\yourname
• Windows using GitHub Desktop: C:\Users\yourname\Documents\GitHub
• Mac using Git from XCode: /Users/yourname
• Mac using GitHub Desktop:

Now change directory to foss4gukdontbeafraid:

cd gitrepositories/foss4gukdontbeafraid

Initialise it as a repository:

git init

This might not appear to do anything but it creates a hidden folder called .git inside foss4gukdontbeafraid that contains the information Git needs to track your repository.

On windows, change your folder preferences to "always view hidden folders" so you can see this folder

That's all we can do until we start adding some files and making changes to them, so let's make a file:

touch blah.txt

This creates a blank text file called "blah.txt" in the folder.

At this point, we have enough in place to start committing to our repository.