One of the primary things that I am looking for in a Source Control Management (SCM) system is a way to manage the history and view various snapshots. Of course there are lots of other features once you are colloborating with others but this is my starting point.
It is hard not to heard of Git as it is getting a lot of attention. I also got the impression that it was hard to use particularly for Windows users. Obviously for it’s advanced features there is extra learning required but to do the basics I have found it easy which has been a pleasant surprise.
Recently I watched the video here on YouTube that Linus Tivolds did to Google staff. It is a good watch and one of the things he mentioned more that once it that is progressively getting a lot easier to use GIT and will continue to do so has more tools become available.
For my own reference I record the steps to get up and running with a local repositary and compared to a lot of things it was pretty damn easy :-
1. Install msysGit . I went with Version 1.5.5 and accepted all of the defaults presented by the Windows Installer. I have installed it on Windows XP and Vista without any issues.
2. Basic configuration of Git is carried out at the Git Bash
$ git config –global user.email Your.Email@domain.com
$ git config –global user.name “Your Real Name”
3. Now comes the part of adding your Project into a Git Repositary. This is all covered in the tutorial here but to show you how basic it is I will continue. In Windows right click on the Folder where your Project is and click on “Git Bash Here” and then type command below to create a Repositary
$ git init
Git will reply
Initialized empty Git repository in .git/
4. Next, tell Git to take a snapshot of the contents of all files under the current directory (note the .), with git-add:
$ git add .
This snapshot is now stored in a temporary staging area which git calls the “index”. You can permanently store the contents of the index in the repository with git-commit:
$ git commit
This will prompt you for a commit message. You’ve now stored the first version of your project in git.
The trick here is that it opens the VIM editor which is set as the default. In the top line type the description then press Esc key to stop editing. Now press the : key to enter a command as per VI editing. Commands are “write” to save and then “quit”. Below is a screen shot of what it looks like :-
Git Confirming Commit
Now you are up and running using Git you can use commands such as the ones below to view the status and any changes since the first commit
Using Git to view Repositary Status
Off course there is a lot more to it and Git Hub seems to be the place to be when it comes to sharing Projects etc. But you have got to start somewhere. I found Kyle Corde’s blog post of Getting Started with Git and GitHub on Windows to be a good guide.
Posted by Norman 
