## Chapter 2
-A tour of Mercurial: the basics
+A tour of git: the basics
### 2.0 Copyright
-Distributed revision control with Mercurial
-Bryan O’Sullivan
+This document is a modified version originally known as "Distributed
+revision control with Mercurial" and originally authored by Bryan
+O’Sullivan. The original document was obtained from
+<http://hgbook.red-bean.com/>.
Copyright © 2006, 2007 Bryan O’Sullivan.
conditions set forth in version 1.0 of the Open Publication
License. Please refer to Appendix D for the license text.
-### 2.1 Installing Mercurial on your system
+As this is a modified version, the name of Bryan O'Sullivan is used
+only to properly credit him with the original text. The appearance of
+his name here explicitly does not assert or imply his endorsement of
+this modified document.
-Prebuilt binary packages of Mercurial are available for every popular
-operating system. These make it easy to start using Mercurial on your
+Portions Copyright © 2007 Carl Worth.
+
+Changes made by Carl include the following:
+
+ * 2007-09-27:
+ * Convert from HTML to markdown source syntax
+ * Eliminate all content except Chapter 2 and Appendix D
+ * Eliminate line numbers from examples
+ * Modified to describe git instead of mercurial
+
+### 2.1 Installing git on your system
+
+Prebuilt binary packages of git are available for many popular
+operating systems. These make it easy to start using git on your
computer immediately.
#### 2.1.1 Linux
Because each Linux distribution has its own packaging tools, policies,
and rate of development, it’s difficult to give a comprehensive set of
-instructions on how to install Mercurial binaries. The version of
-Mercurial that you will end up with can vary depending on how active
+instructions on how to install git binaries. The version of
+git that you will end up with can vary depending on how active
the person is who maintains the package for your distribution.
-To keep things simple, I will focus on installing Mercurial from the
+To keep things simple, I will focus on installing git from the
command line under the most popular Linux distributions. Most of these
distributions provide graphical package managers that will let you
-install Mercurial with a single click; the package name to look for is
-mercurial.
+install git with a single click. The package name to look for is
+often git, but is sometimes git-core, (due to an unfortunate name
+with git, meaning GNU Interactive Tools).
* Debian
- apt-get install mercurial
+ apt-get install git-core
* Fedora Core
- yum install mercurial
+ yum install git
* Gentoo
- emerge mercurial
+ emerge git
* OpenSUSE
- yum install mercurial
-
- * Ubuntu Ubuntu’s Mercurial package is based on Debian’s. To install
-it, run the following command.
+ yum install git
- apt-get install mercurial
+ * Ubuntu
-The Ubuntu package for Mercurial tends to lag behind the Debian
-version by a considerable time margin (at the time of writing, seven
-months), which in some cases will mean that on Ubuntu, you may run
-into problems that have since been fixed in the Debian package.
+ apt-get install git
-#### 2.1.2 Solaris
+#### 2.1.2 Mac OS X
-XXX.
+A git-core package is available through
+[macports](http://macports.org). Once macports is enabled, the command
+to install git is:
-#### 2.1.3 Mac OS X
+ port install git-core
-Lee Cantey publishes an installer of Mercurial for Mac OS X at
-[http://mercurial.berkwood.com][6]. This package works on both
-Intel- and Power-based Macs. Before you can use it, you must install a
-compatible version of Universal MacPython [[BI][7]]. This is easy to
-do; simply follow the instructions on Lee’s site.
+#### 2.1.3 Windows
-#### 2.1.4 Windows
-
-Lee Cantey also publishes an installer of Mercurial for Windows at
-[http://mercurial.berkwood.com][6]. This package has no external
-dependencies; it “just works”.
-
-Note: The Windows version of Mercurial does not automatically convert
-line endings between Windows and Unix styles. If you want to share
-work with Unix users, you must do a little additional configuration
-work. XXX Flesh this out.
+Git has long been available as part of cygwin, and works reasonably
+well in that environment. Some people find cygwin a particularly
+inelegant approach to running git and would prefer a "native"
+solution. To this end, the [msysgit
+project](http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/) is rapidly putting
+together a solution including various packages with full
+installers. These include GitMe, a package to install the entire
+development environment necessary to work on improving the msysgit
+port of git, and WinGit, a package for installing just git itself
+without the development environment, (still in Alpha as of September
+2008).
### 2.2 Getting started
-To begin, we’ll use the “hg version” command to find out whether
-Mercurial is actually installed properly. The actual version
-information that it prints isn’t so important; it’s whether it prints
-anything at all that we care about.
+To begin, we’ll use the “git version” command to find out whether git
+is actually installed properly. Versions 1.5 and newer of git are much
+more friendly to new users than versions 1.4 and older. If you aren't
+yet running version 1.5 or newer, it's highly recommended that you
+upgrade.
- $ hg version
- Mercurial Distributed SCM (version 2937d0dbfab0)
-
- Copyright (C) 2005, 2006 Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com>
- This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
- warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+ $ git version
+ git version 1.5.3.2
#### 2.2.1 Built-in help
-Mercurial provides a built-in help system. This is invaluable for
-those times when you find yourself stuck trying to remember how to run
-a command. If you are completely stuck, simply run “hg help”; it will
-print a brief list of commands, along with a description of what each
-does. If you ask for help on a specific command (as below), it prints
-more detailed information.
-
- $ hg help init
- hg init [-e CMD] [--remotecmd CMD] [DEST]
-
- create a new repository in the given directory
-
- Initialize a new repository in the given directory. If the given
- directory does not exist, it is created.
-
- If no directory is given, the current directory is used.
-
- It is possible to specify an ssh:// URL as the destination.
- Look at the help text for the pull command for important details
- about ssh:// URLs.
-
- options:
-
- -e --ssh specify ssh command to use
- --remotecmd specify hg command to run on the remote side
-
- use "hg -v help init" to show global options
-
-For a more impressive level of detail (which you won’t usually need)
-run “hg help -v”. The -v option is short for --verbose, and tells
-Mercurial to print more information than it usually would.
+Git provides a built-in help system. This is invaluable for those
+times when you find yourself stuck trying to remember how to run a
+command. If you are completely stuck, simply run “git help”; it will
+print a brief list of commonly-used commands, along with a description
+of what each does. If you ask for help on a specific command (such as
+"git help init"), it prints more detailed information. [XXX: Does "git
+help <foo>" work universally as a built-in or does it expect man to be
+present and just call out to "man git-<foo>"?]
+
+ [XXX: The original hgbook includes the complete output of "hg
+ help init" at this point. I'm not including the corresponding
+ "git help init" output as it would be excessively long. The
+ description alone is quite reasonable, (other than a
+ not-too-helpful aside about the obsolete git-init-db command),
+ but it only comes after a full screen's worth of options
+ details. Might it make sense to have a more summarized help
+ output for "git help <foo>" than all of the documentation
+ available for git-<foo>? And perhaps alos provide a "git -v
+ help" similar to "hg -v help" for more?]
### 2.3 Working with a repository
projects / hgbook-git / blobdiff