I’ve just started using git/github and have summarised below (for my own reference) a few of the commonly used git commands. I haven’t included setting up your git client as this is well documented on github’s help portal.
Setting up a git repository for an existing project
To initialise the git repository in the current directory
$ git init
Create a new file named README
$ touch README
Add README file to the repository
$ git add README
Add all files in the directory to the repository
$ git add *
Commit to your local repository
$ git commit -m 'first commit'
Commiting changes locally
Summarise changes since your last commit
$ git diff
Commit your changes to your local git repository
$ git commit -a -m "whatever"
or to discard the changes to your local git repository
git checkout -f
Commiting to github (First time)
Add the remote origin to the local git repository. Do this once per repository.
$ git remote add origin git@github.com:username/repo.git
Commiting to github (Subsequent Commits)
Send your commit to GitHub
$ git push origin master
New files to add?
Add any new files since your last update
$ git add *
Getting changes from your remote repository
To update any changed files from the server to your local repository, if you are working from more than one machine, for example
$ git pull
Deleting
To delete a local branch
$ git branch -d 2012.1-stable
To delete a remote branch
$ git push origin :branch
Checking out a branch
To check out a branch
$ git checkout branch
Cloning
Checking out a project when you don’t have a local copy
$ git clone http://github.com/user/repo.git$ git checkout -b 2012.1-stable origin/2012.1-stable
Two great sites are Git – SVN Crash Course or an alternative and github help resourses. I’m using Git for Windows.