Learn Git Basics in 10 Minutes

Introduction to the core concepts of Git, one of the most common source code management systems.

Git is a free and open source distributed version control system. It’s incredibly powerful and prevalent in the IT industry, meaning that having at least a basic understanding of Git is crucial for most tech roles.

The core concepts are best explained via a series of practical examples, which we will flesh out to increase your overall understanding. By the end of this 10-minute read you should have picked up the basics of Git.

Getting Started — Install and Configure

Installers are available for most platforms via https://git-scm.com/.

Alternatively you can also download Desktop GUIs — examples from GitHub [Windows, Mac] and Atlassian [download Sourcetree].

Once installed, head to your console of choice and type git --version to verify all is working.

Next step is to do some basic configuration. You should initially configure your user information that will be used to identity any changes you make.

git config --global user.name "firstname lastname"
git config --global user.email "firstname.lastname@example.com"