Hakan Çelik· Hakan Çelik · Git · 5 dk okuma
What Is Git, Installation and Free Software
What Is Git, Installation and Free Software
What Is Git?
Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.
Git was written by Linus Torvalds, the author of the Linux kernel.
Here are a few links to get to know Linus Torvalds better:
What Is a Version Control System?
A version control system, or VCS, tracks the history of changes as people and teams collaborate on projects together. As the project evolves, teams can run tests, fix bugs, and contribute new code, with the confidence that any version can be recovered at any time. Developers can review project history to find out:
- Which changes were made?
- Who made the changes?
- When were the changes made?
- Why were the changes needed?
What Is a Distributed Version Control System?
In this abbreviation — DVCS — the key point is this: Git does not allow the files related to a project to be stored in a single centralized place. People working with Git keep the entire history without needing any connection, and they can synchronize it with the help of a remote server. Because it is not centralized, this is called distributed.
Why Git?
Git is not the only version control system — there are other version control systems similar to Git, some centralized and some distributed.
According to Stack Overflow data, 87.2% of developers use Git, making it the most widely used VCS.
Why Do We Need It?
Imagine you’ve just started at a company and you’ve been assigned to a project with 5 people working on it. Not all the employees are even in the same city, yet you need to develop the same project without things getting mixed up — that’s where Git comes in.
You’re working on a project by yourself and you’re sure it’s done. A few days later you notice a bug or something missing. So you take a backup somewhere to not lose the old project files and continue with the other one. This keeps going, and by the end of the day your working directory might look like this:
- This is the final one
- This time it’s definitely done
- All bugs fixed, process complete
- I’m sure it’s finished
You could end up with a bunch of project backups with names like these — that’s where Git comes in as well.
Who Can Use It?
Even though Git is a technology well known and constantly used in the software industry, it can be used by anyone who uses a computer — while taking notes, storing pictures, saving data, drawing, and so on.
If you want to see the changes you’ve made, save, manage, and go back in time whenever you want — you should use Git.
The Importance of Open Source
Who Is Richard Stallman?
Richard Matthew Stallman (widely known by the initialism rms; born March 16, 1953) is an American free software activist, system expert, and software developer. He is the founder of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation.
Free Software
I want to say a few things from my own perspective. There are some names that are generally believed to have brought technology to great places and whom society admires. These people have benefited from free software and from society, yet they have achieved beautiful, sleek designs and founded companies without giving anything back to society. Furthermore, they use these designs and companies to impress society, making people respect them and aspire to be like them. Yet the real respect and admiration should go to free software advocates — because they are the ones responsible for technology advancing this fast and enabling people to learn things so quickly.
To give an example: if I asked you for a stone and a stick, and you gave them to me, and I used them to make a wheel and then sold it — but never told anyone how I made it — and sold beautifully designed, sleek, and useful tires, would technology in that society advance? “Unity is strength” is not a phrase said in vain.
If you make your projects open source or free, other people can look at what you’ve done and find inspiration, learn new things, contribute and help you grow, gain experience, have references to put on your resume, and prove the technologies you claim to know. This also makes your hiring process faster. That’s why you should do it.
Installation
Installing on Mac OS X
There are several ways to install Git on Mac. In fact, if you installed XCode (or Command Line Tools), Git may already be installed. To find out, open a terminal and type git --version.
$ git --version
git version 2.7.0 (Apple Git-66)If it’s not installed:
- Download Git for Mac from the latest release
- Follow the instructions to complete the installation.
- Open Terminal and confirm that it was installed successfully with
git --version.
$ git --version
git version 2.9.2Then configure your settings using the example below as a reference:
$ git config --global user.name "Hakan Çelik"
$ git config --global user.email "[email protected]"Installing on Windows
Download from https://gitforwindows.org/. Complete the installation with all settings at their recommended defaults. Search for git and open Git Bash, then write the configuration:
$ git config --global user.name "Hakan Çelik"
$ git config --global user.email "[email protected]"Installing on Linux
Debian / Ubuntu (apt-get)
Git packages are defined by apt. You can install it using apt-get from your shell:
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install gitVerify the installation by typing git --version in your console:
$ git --version
git version 2.9.2Then configure your settings:
$ git config --global user.name "Hakan Çelik"
$ git config --global user.email "[email protected]"Fedora (dnf/yum)
Git packages are defined in yum and dnf. You can install git using dnf from your shell (or yum for older versions of Fedora):
sudo dnf install gitor
sudo yum install gitLet’s verify the installation:
$ git --version
git version 2.9.2Configure your settings:
$ git config --global user.name "Hakan Çelik"
$ git config --global user.email "[email protected]"
