What is Git & GitHub?

Git is a distributed version control system that allows you to track changes in your code and collaborate with other developers. GitHub is a web-based platform that hosts Git repositories and provides additional features such as issue tracking, code review, and project management. In this page, you will learn how to use Git and GitHub for your ASP.NET web projects.

Learn more about Version Control Systems: MDN Site

Getting Started with Git:

Git is a command-line tool that you can use to perform various operations on your code, such as creating branches, committing changes, merging conflicts, and pushing or pulling from remote repositories. Git has a simple and intuitive syntax that makes it easy to learn and use. To get started with Git, you need to install it on your computer and configure it with your name and email address.

Learn more about Git: Git Website

Getting Started with GitHub:

GitHub is the largest and most popular platform for hosting and managing Git repositories. You can use GitHub to store your code online, share it with other developers, and access it from any device. GitHub also integrates with many IDEs such as Visual Studio and VS Code, allowing you to perform Git operations from within your development environment. To get started with GitHub, you need to create an account and a repository for your project.

Learn more about GitHub: GitHub Website

What are Repositories?

A repository is a collection of files and folders that represents your project. You can create a repository on your local machine or on a remote server such as GitHub. A repository contains a .git folder that stores the history and metadata of your project. You can also clone or fork existing repositories from other sources to work on them or contribute to them. To see an example of an enterprise-level code in action, you can check out this repository that contains the Open Source Entity Core code which is used in many enterprise grade solutions..

Checkout the Entity Core Repository: Entity Core

Git Workflow:

To get started integrating Git into your workflow, there are a few necessary commands to learn. Git commands are the instructions that you can use to interact with your Git repositories. You can type these commands in your terminal or command prompt to perform various operations on your code, such as creating branches, committing changes, merging conflicts, and pushing or pulling from remote repositories. Here are some of the most common and useful Git commands that you need to get started with Git and GitHub:

• git init: This command creates a new Git repository in your current directory. It initializes a .git folder that stores the history and metadata of your project.
• git clone: This command copies an existing Git repository from a remote server to your local machine. You can specify the URL of the repository that you want to clone, such as git clone https://github.com/dotnet/EntityCore.git.
• git status: This command shows the current state of your working directory and staging area, which is essentially a cache of project changes. It tells you which files are modified, untracked, or staged for the next commit.
• git add: This command adds the changes in your working directory to the staging area. You can specify the files or directories that you want to add, such as git add index.html or git add . to add all the changes in the current directory to the staging area.
• git commit: This command creates a copy of the files within the staging area as a new commit in your local repository. You can provide a message that describes the changes, such as git commit -m “Add homepage”. A commit is a snapshot of your project at a specific point in time.
• git push: This command transfers the commits from your local repository to a remote repository. You can specify the remote and the branch that you want to push, such as git push origin master. This command updates the remote repository with your local changes.
• git pull: This command fetches the changes from a remote repository and merges them with your local branch. You can specify the remote and the branch that you want to pull, such as git pull origin master. This command updates your local repository with the remote changes.
• git branch: This command lists the branches in your local repository. A branch is a pointer to a commit that represents a different version of your project. You can create, delete, or rename branches with this command, such as git branch feature or git branch -d feature. The branch with a star (*) next to it is the current branch.
• git checkout: This command switches to a different branch in your local repository. You can specify the branch that you want to switch to, such as git checkout feature. This command also updates your working directory and staging area to match the branch that you checked out.
• git merge: This command combines the changes from two branches into one. You can specify the branch that you want to merge into the current branch, such as git merge feature. This command creates a new commit that contains the merged changes, unless there are conflicts that need to be resolved.

For more Git commands and their usage, you can refer to the [Git Cheat Sheet] or the [Git Documentation].

Git & GitHub with IDEs:

IDEs are integrated development environments that provide various tools and features to help you write, debug, and run your code. Some of the most popular IDEs for web development are Visual Studio and VS Code, which are both developed by Microsoft. It is also worthy of note that GitHub is currently owned by Microsoft, which means these technologies share high interopability with technologies like Azure. These IDEs also support Git and GitHub integration, which means that you can perform Git operations from within your development environment, without using the command line. Here are some of the benefits and features of using Git and GitHub with these IDEs:

• Visual Studio: Visual Studio is a powerful and comprehensive IDE that supports a wide range of languages, frameworks, and platforms for web development, such as ASP.NET, C#, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and more. Visual Studio also has a built-in Team Explorer that allows you to manage your Git repositories, branches, commits, and pull requests. You can also connect to your GitHub account and access your GitHub repositories, issues, and actions from within Visual Studio.
• VS Code: VS Code is a lightweight and versatile code editor that supports many languages, extensions, and themes for web development, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, PHP, and more. VS Code also has a built-in Source Control panel that allows you to perform basic Git operations, such as staging, committing, pushing, and pulling. You can also install the GitHub Pull Requests and Issues extension that enables you to review and manage your GitHub pull requests and issues from within VS Code.

Using Git and GitHub with these IDEs can help you improve your workflow, productivity, and collaboration for your web projects. You can also explore other IDEs and extensions that support Git and GitHub integration, such as Atom, Sublime Text, Eclipse, and IntelliJ IDEA.

Click here to see some practical scripts that can be ran alongside with these IDEs: Scripts