Re: a few beginner git questions

From: Allan Wind <allan_wind@lifeintegrity.com>
Date: Mar 6, 2010, 07:01 UTC
Message-ID: <20100306070150.GB14424@lifeintegrity.com>
In-Reply-To: <15b345f1003052242r7d812fe4q6ade253283696304@mail.gmail.com>

On 2010-03-06T00:42:40, Thomas Anderson wrote:

> 1. When do you commit changes and when do you stage changes?  Or maybe
> more to the point, what's the difference between doing "stage, commit,
> stage, commit" and "stage, stage, commit"?

The former gives you one commit and the latter two comments. Staging (git add) is local while commits can shared with others (git push).

> 2. What's the difference between merging and pushing?  In CVS, you
> merge code by manually adding changes.  ie. the CVS client doesn't do
> the merging - you do.  Yet in Git Gui, there's a Merge menu button, as
> if it's now supposed to be somehow automated?

pushing is how you copy the data to another repository while merging is integrating multiple versions in into a single new version.

> 3. Creating branches in Git Gui is easy enough but it's unclear to me
> how to switch back to the trunk once you've created a branch.

git checkout master (which is the default name for "trunk")

<http://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/GitFaq#How_do_I_access_other_branches_in_a_repository.3F>

Show 7 quoted lines

> 4. I clone git://github.com/symfony/symfony.git to c:\git\test\root
> and clone that to c:\git\test\clone.  I then blank
> c:\git\test\clone\README, stage it, commit it and push it and the
> change does not appear in c:\git\test\root\README.  I then reopen Git
> Gui and open root and there I see the blanked README as an uncommited
> state change.  I commit it and the change still does not appear in
> c:\git\test\root\README.  Is this what Git should be doing?

<http://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/GitFaq#Why_won.27t_I_see_changes_in_the_remote_repo_after_.22git_push.22.3F>

/allan

-- 
Allan Wind
Life Integrity, LLC
<http://lifeintegrity.com>