Git Setup for a New Project: A Complete Step-by-Step Guide

Introduction

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 is a tool that tracks every change you make to your code, like a timeline. If something breaks, you can always go back to an earlier working version. It allows multiple developers to collaborate on a project efficiently without overwriting each other’s work, by maintaining a complete history of all modifications.

The Three States in Git

Git has three main states that files can reside in:

• Modified: Modified means the file has been changed, but the changes are not committed to Git yet.
• Staged: Staged means that you have marked a modified file in its current version to go into your next commit snapshot.
• Committed: Committed means that the data is safely stored in your local database.

Installing Git

Download Git from https://git-scm.com/ and add to PATH.