Repositories

A repository is essentially a project. You can imagine it as a project's folder with all the related files inside of it. In fact, that's what it will look like on your computer anyways.

You tell Git what your project is and Git will start tracking all of the changes to that folder. Files added or subtracted or even a single letter in a single file changed -- all of it's tracked and time stamped by Git. That's version control.

Using Terminal

Terminal (or Bash) is a way of using your computer by just typing commands. You can rename files, open files, create new folders, and move between directories (folders) all by typing out commands. You can even run a text editor (such as Vim) in your terminal and never have to leave!

Besides navigating your computer, you can also use programs in Terminal that have a command-line interface (CLI), meaning they can be run with commands in terminal. Git-it is one, you're using terminal to use it! Git is another. You can access and control Git through commands in terminal, as you'll be doing very soon!

In Git-it you'll learn a few basic command line actions which will be described within the steps.

Step: Create a Repository

You're going to create a new folder and initialize it as a Git repository.

To make things easier, name your folder what you'd name the project. How about 'hello-world'.

You can type these commands one at a time into your terminal window.

To make a new folder:

$ mkdir hello-world

To go into that folder:

$ cd hello-world

To create a new Git instance for a project:

$ git init

That's it! It will just return you to a new line. If you want to be double-sure that it's a Git repository, type git status and if it doesn't return 'fatal: Not a git repository...', you're golden!