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 command prompt using the following syntax (referring back to here if necessary):
Linux or Mac
mkdir -p gitrepositories/gettingstartedwithgit
Windows
mkdir gitrepositories/gettingstartedwithgit
Where is this?
If you don't specify a location for this folder, then it will use a default location as follows:
| OS | Location |
|---|---|
| Windows using Git Bash | C:\Users\yourname |
| Windows using GitHub Desktop | C:\Users\yourname\Documents\GitHub |
| Linux | /home/yourname |
| Mac using Git from XCode | /Users/yourname |
| Mac using GitHub Desktop | /Users/yourname/Documents |
Now change directory to gettingstartedwithgit:
cd gitrepositories/gettingstartedwithgit
Initialise it as a repository:
git init
This might not appear to do anything but it creates a hidden folder called .git inside gettingstartedwithgit 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:
Mac and Linux
touch blah.txt
Windows
type nul > 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.