Basic Git Commands

Generally, I don’t use the command line to interact with my version controlled client accounts. In most cases, I prefer to use Tower, a great Git client for Mac and Windows but in the case of gbradhopkins.com, I decided to use the command line as a way of becoming more familiar with it. Below are the basic commands that I use to push content to my Github account.

These are the steps for commiting new or updated content to my Github account. As I use Git more, hopefully these will become muscle memory and I’ll no longer need this document. Until then…

Commands for pushing content

After creating or editing a file, run the following commands in the Terminal.

git status

This is an optional command. It simply shows what has changed and results in something like this:

modified:   _includes/head.html
modified:   _sass/_gbradhopkins.scss
modified:   css/main.scss

We can then review the list of changes and if satisfied, move to the next step.

git add .

git commit -m 'Commit message here'

After adding our commit message and hitting enter, we receive a message indicating what we’ve done (or are about to do).

[gh-pages c5656de] git article update
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

git push

That’s it. All done. The files are now commited to the repository that we’ve been working in.

Next up, how to access that repository from another computer to continue working on it.