Introduction

In 2005, Linus Torvalds urgently needed a new version control system to maintain the development of the Linux Kernel. So he went offline for a week, wrote a revolutionary new system from scratch, and called it Git. Fifteen years later, the platform is the undisputed leader in a crowded field.

Worldwide, a huge number of start-ups, collectives and multinationals (including Google and Microsoft) use Git to maintain the source code of their software projects. Some host their own Git projects, others use Git via commercial hosting companies such as GitHub (founded in 2007), Bitbucket (founded in 2010) and GitLab (founded in 2011). The largest of these, GitHub, has 40 million registered developers and was acquired by Microsoft for a whopping $7.5 billion in 2018.

The best indication of Git’s market dominance is a survey of developers by Stack Overflow. This found that 88.4% of 74,298 respondents in 2018 used Git (up from 69.3% in 2015).

Get to know Git, the state-of-the-art version control system and probably THE MOST used tool among developers.

Goals

• Learn what is Git and what it serves for
• Understand basic concepts of Git
• Get to know differences between Git and GitHub
• Setup GitHub
• Get to know the UI of GitHub
• Learn Git basic commands

Basic tools

To carry out the activities in this module you can use any modern web browser. We especially recommend downloading the Firefox Developer Edition browser. This special edition of the Firefox browser incorporates tools specifically designed for developers, as well as incorporating the latest web standards and experimental features.