This activity consists of a series of small exercises to apply the concepts in the workshop slides in practice. In the activity, you will:
- add, commit, and commit changes to a copied version of the repository
- create new branches and practice merging, rebasing, and creating pull requests
- resolve merge conflicts
- revert and reset commits
Aside from copying and cloning the repository on to your machine, all the exercises below can be done independently. Feel free to skip questions if you're stuck or want to move on!
Creating a template of a repository is analagous to creating a copy of google slide or doc. It creates another remote repository that is independent from the original.
To create a template in the Code of the repository, navigate to the Use this template button in the right-hand corner. From there, you should check Include all branches and give the repository a descriptive name.
Again, make sure to check Include all branches. For the exercises below, you'll want access to all the branches from the original.
After filling in the fields, click Create Repository to be re-directed to the new repository.
Now, to clone the repository, click on Code, and copy the url under HTTPS or SSH. From there, in your terminal, run
git clone <[email protected]:USER-NAME/REPOSITORY-NAME.git>
# e.g cloning the original repository
git clone [email protected]:hcs-t4sg/git-workshop-F24-S25.git
After cloning, open the repo in you preferred code editor (i.e. VS Code), and in your terminal, enter the directory
# list files in current directory
ls
cd <repo_name>
# e.g.
cd git-workshop-F24-S25
Create a new branch called answers and switch to it.
Create a new file called answers.md, and take 3-5 minutes to answer the following
questions:
- What is the difference between git and GitHub?
- Why is version control important?
- What is the command to view a branch's commit history?
- What command lists all the branches in your local repository? Which one lists those in the remote?
- To prevent specific files and folders from being commited to a repository, what should you do?
Write your answers in answers.md (the format is up to you). After you're finished,
make a commit and push your changes. Then, make a PR to merge into main.
Before merging the PR into main, navigate to the Files Changed tab, where you'll see files with lines highlighted in green and red. Looking at the base branch as a baseline, green represents additions in the compare branch while red represents deletions.
Hover over a line of code and click the plus symbol. Add a sample comment. In PRs, collaborators can reference specific lines of code by making in-line comments.
Merge answers into main and navigate to the branches view of the repository. You'll see that answers is now marked as Merged and is now safe to delete.
There are two branches mergeA and mergeB each with markdown files labeled from 1 to 6.
Make a pull request with mergeA as the base branch and mergeB as the compare branch.
Upon comparing each branch, you will see that an automatic merge fails and that you will have to
manually resolve conflict files.
To resolve the conflicts flagged in the PR, merge mergeB into
mergeA (i.e. mergeA will become the merged version of the two) by either accepting the current change,
the incoming change, or both changes. Then, once you've resolved all conflicts and commited and push the merge
to the repository, complete the PR.
Now, navigate to rebaseA and rebaseB. Both of these branches should look familiar,
being identical counterparts to the original versions of mergeA and mergeB. Like exercise 3,
integrate the changes from both branches such that rebaseB is combined into rebaseA. However, instead
of a merge, use a rebase.
In the branch squash, you will see that the last three commits are fairly similar, each adding information
about a T4SG member named Jayden. Squash these three commits into a single commit titled
"added biography information for Jayden".
In revert, there were 5 commits made in consecutive order, each labeled from A-E.
In a commit l, a message was added to index.md that reads: "This is a message from commit {l}".
Make a series of reverts such that the commit history becomes A-B-C-D-E-C'-D' with C' and D'
referring to commits C and D being reverted. Before executing the reverts, what do you expect index.md to
look like in D'?
After making these reverts, use git cherry-pick to return the branch to a commit identical to that of E.
There are two branches reset-soft and reset-hard that are based off revert.
In each branch, perform a reset (soft on reset-soft and hard on reset-hard)
to bring the commit history back to commit C. In reset-soft recover your changes
to return the branch back to E. Unfortunately, once you have pushed changes after a
hard reset, they cannot be recovered!
As the last exercise of this workshop, open an issue on the main repository (not the fork) and open an Issue with a few sentences. In the Issue, please feel free to either:
- Introduce yourself
- Talk about something you learned new at this workshop
- Feedback about how the workshop was run, content, etc.
- Anything else!
Thank you for attending!