Git is the source control management software of choice by many developers. It feels very light weight and yet is a fully functional and quite easy to use tool for most developers. For those that need extra help with Git there are a ton of resources out there for you, including this article.

So, to get started you should install Git. Go to the Git website (http://git-scm.com/downloads) and download the appropriate package based on your OS. This will install the tools necessary to use Git on your local system.

Steps for Starting a repository locally:

1. Install Git
2. Open the command promptterminal window
3. Change the directory to where you would like to start a repository
   you may use commands such as:
   cd <<dir>> to change the current directory
   mkdir <<dir>> to create a new directory or md in windows
4. run git init to create the repository in the current directory.

In a case where you have an existing repository that you want to have a copy of:

Follow Steps 1-3 as stated above. In step 3 you will go to the root directory of where you want the repository since getting a copy of the repository will create a directory for the repository.

instead of git init, we will run git clone to copy or clone the remote repository.

git clone <<url>> [directory]

<<url>> – could be a URL for GitHub or Bitbucket or just a remote network path

[directory] – is an optional parameter to provide the name of the directory you will create the clone in.

In either case you will result in a local Git repo that you can begin working in. You can create projects, store files and then use your git workflow to save your changes to a remote repo.

git add

git commit

git pull

git push