Learning Git

[This is a live article recording my learning process of Git, I'll update it progressively]

Online Hosting

Recently I started learning Git and planned to use it for future projects. I found there are two useful online hosting for git repository:

• Github: Free only to open source project and there are a lot of cool people and project there. Ideal for open source projects.
• Bitbucket: Free to use to small teams, no matter open source or not. Ideal for personal projects.

Resources and Books

The process of learning Git is not as smooth as CVS or SVN’s which indeed I just used them without serious learning. I learned the Safari Online Videos on Git and found the following resources for further learning:

• Manage source code using Git from IBM Developerwork
• Git by Sample
• Repositories Organizer Help for Xcode from Apple Developer
• The Git Community Book
• The Help portal of Github
• Bitbucket Documentation Home

I listed the useful Git command here in Github.

Process on setting up a new repository for a new project using Bitbucket

I’m still not sure about the correct work flow for using Git with online hosting and XCode. For now, I’ve done the following steps for my projects:

1. After created account for Github and Bitbucket, I chose the latter for my personal projects. The setting up stage includes setting the email and name in Git, generating SSH key and adding the key in these two websites. You may find the steps in their support page.
2. Add a new repository for my project on Bitbucket. After this, we would get the URL for the project. In our local machine, do git clone at the proper folder:

   $ git clone git@bitbucket.org:username/new_project.git

   It’ll clone the empty repository to our local machine. For example, if we do it under /Working Project, it’ll clone the repository at /Working Project/new_project.

3. Create the project in XCode and choose the same folder (/Working Project/new_project in the above sample) as the repository just cloned. After this, go to Finder and check the folder structure in file system. If there are unnecessary hierarchy in the folder, flat it by moving the project upper a level in the repository. To avoid unnecessary folder hierarchy, I just chose a temporary folder to hold the project, then copy the content to the local git repository for it  (/Working Project/new_project in the above sample).
4. Create  .gitignore in the repository root file, add .DS_Store to the first line.

   $ touch .gitignore

5. Add the files and commit, then push to remote repository in Bitbucket.

   $ git add .
   $ git status
   $ git commit -m"Init Empty Project"

6. Push to remote repository:

   git push -u origin master

So far we’ve created an online repository and a “empty” project, ready for development.

Process on checking out an online repository and contributing source code

It’s similar to above steps. I use at least two branches for development: master for release and developing for working under development.

1. Clone the project to local machine

   $ git clone git@bitbucket.org:username/new_project.git

2. to be updated
3. ==

Process on branching

This section will include instructions on creating new branch, merging branch and other branching tasks.

Process on tagging

This section will include instructions on tagging.

Process on rebasing

This section will include instructions on rebasing.