Beginners to Git

Git is a distributed version control system (VCS) that makes it easier to track changes to files. For example, when you edit a file, git can help you determine exactly what changed, who changed it, and why.

Git — from Linus Torvalds

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.

In complex projects, where multiple people might be making changes to the same files simultaneously, it’s easy to get into a weird state. Anyone who’s dealt with “merge conflicts” and those baffling >>>>>>> ======= <<<<<<< symbols can attest to this.

If you start to understand how git works, you’ll see why conflicts occur and how to recover from these situations easily. This blog gives you simple gist on the basics.

The Three States

Git has three main states that your files can reside in: modified, staged, and committed

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