Creating a Repository

Overview

Teaching: 10 min
Exercises: 0 min

Questions

• Where does Git store information?

Objectives

• Create a local Git repository.

Once Git is configured, we can start using it.

Let’s create a new repository for our work. A Git repository is a data structure used to track changes to a set of project files over time. Repositories are stored within the same directory as these project files, in a hidden directory called .git, which we don’t need to be concerned with right now. Click “Create new repository on your Hard Drive”.

CLI Steps

https://swcarpentry.github.io/git-novice/03-create/

First, we will create a new directory for our project and enter that directory. <!explain commands as we go along>

$ mkdir hello-world
$ cd hello-world

We will now create an empty git repository to track changes to our project. To do this we will use the git init command, which is simply short for initialise.

$ git init

Initialized empty Git repository in <your file path>/hello-world/.git/

The hello-world directory is now a git repository.

Then we give our repository a name - in this case hello-world. You can also provide a short description that will show up on GitHub.com later. We also choose the location to put the repository on our local computer. For this workshop it’s easier to put the repository on your desktop. It’s also good practice to check the README box, which will create a blank file where we can put information about our content. We’ll discuss Git ignore (which handles files you don’t want tracked) later in the workshop, and the License section is a discussion for another workshop.

If you look on your desktop you’ll see a new folder. This is your new repository, which is just like any other folder on your computer. However, it is also special because Git can now track versions of your files.

You’ll now see that GitHub Desktop shows the status of your repository. You haven’t added anything yet, so no changes show up.

Advanced tip

If you navigate to the hello-world directory on the command line and use ls -a flag to show everything, we can see that Git has created a hidden directory within hello-world called .git:

$ ls -a

.	..	.git

Git stores information about the project in this special sub-directory. If we ever delete it, we will lose the project’s history.

Places to Create Git Repositories

Try to create a new git repository inside of the hello-world repository you just created. Since you don’t have the welcome screen any more, you’ll need to go to File/New Repository.

What happens? Can you create the sub-repository? Why is it a bad idea to do this?

Solution

Git repositories can interfere with each other if they are “nested” in the directory of another: the outer repository will try to version-control the inner repository. Therefore, it’s best to create each new Git repository in a separate directory. GitHub Desktop is smart enough to block this operation, even if the repository wasn’t created in GitHub Desktop (that’s the suggestion in the yellow triangle- we’ve already added the repo so it doesn’t do anything).

Key Points

• Local repositories can be set up and track changes in files.