List of exercises 

Basic-1: Record changes

Add 1/2 onion to ingredients.txt and also the instruction to “enjoy!” to instructions.txt.

After modifying the files, do not stage the changes yet (do not git add yet).

When you are done editing the files, try git diff:

$ git diff

You will see (can you identify in there the two added lines?):

diff --git a/ingredients.txt b/ingredients.txt
index 4422a31..ba8854f 100644
--- a/ingredients.txt
+++ b/ingredients.txt
@@ -2,3 +2,4 @@
 * 1 chili
 * 1 lime
 * 2 tsp salt
+* 1/2 onion
diff --git a/instructions.txt b/instructions.txt
index 7811273..2b11074 100644
--- a/instructions.txt
+++ b/instructions.txt
@@ -4,3 +4,4 @@
 * squeeze lime
 * add salt
 * and mix well
+* enjoy!

Now first stage and commit each change separately (what happens when we leave out the -m flag?):

$ git add ingredients.txt
$ git commit -m "add half an onion"
$ git add instructions.txt
$ git commit                   # <-- we have left out -m "..."

When you leave out the -m flag, Git should open an editor where you can edit your commit message. This message will be associated and stored with the changes you made. This message is your chance to explain what you’ve done and convince others (and your future self) that the changes you made were justified. Write a message and save and close the file.

When you are done committing the changes, experiment with these commands:

$ git log
$ git log --stat
$ git log --oneline

We can make modifications to a file by clicking on the file and then the pen symbol:

Screenshot on GitHub before clicking on the pen symbol — By clicking on the pen symbol we can switch to edit mode.

Screenshot on GitHub when previewing file changes — Before committing the change, click on “Preview”.

Our goal is to arrive at two new commits:

“add half an onion” (modifying ingredients.txt)
“don’t forget to enjoy” (modifying instructions.txt)

When you are done committing the changes, try to browse commit history on GitHub.

(optional) Basic-2: Comparing and showing commits

Have a look at specific commits with git show HASH.
Inspect differences between commit hashes with git diff HASH1 HASH2.

(optional) Basic-3: Visual diff tools

This exercise is only relevant for the command line. In the browser, the preview is already side-by-side and “visual”.

Make further modifications and experiment with git difftool (requires installing one of the visual diff tools):

On Windows or Linux:

$ git difftool --tool=meld HASH

On macOS:

$ git difftool --tool=opendiff HASH

You probably want to use the same visual diff tool every time and you can configure Git for that:

$ git config --global diff.tool meld

(optional) Basic-4: Browser and command line

You have noticed that it is possible to work either in the command line or in the browser. It could help to deepen the understanding trying to do the above steps in both.

If you have managed to do the above in the command line, try now in the browser.
If you got stuck in the command line and move to the browser, try now to trouble-shoot the command line Git.

Basic-5: Test your understanding

Which command(s) below would save the changes of myfile.txt to an existing local Git repository?

```
$ git commit -m "my recent changes"
```

$ git init myfile.txt
$ git commit -m "my recent changes"

$ git add myfile.txt
$ git commit -m "my recent changes"

$ git commit -m myfile.txt "my recent changes"

Solution

Would only create a commit if files have already been staged.
Would try to create a new repository in a folder “myfile.txt”.
Is correct: first add the file to the staging area, then commit.
Would try to commit a file “my recent changes” with the message myfile.txt.

Branching and merging

Branch-1: Create and commit to branches

In this exercise, you will create another new branch and few more commits. We will use this in the next section, to practice merging. The goal of the exercise is to end up with 3 branches.

Change to the branch main.
Create another branch called less-salt.
- Note! makes sure you are on main branch when you create the less-salt branch.
- A safer way would be to explicitly mention to create from the main branch as shown below:
```
$ git branch less-salt main
```
Switch to the less-salt branch.
On the less-salt branch reduce the amount of salt.
Commit your changes to the less-salt branch.

Use the same commands as we used above.

We now have three branches (in this case HEAD points to less-salt):

$ git branch

  experiment
* less-salt
  main

$ git graph

* bf28166 (HEAD -> less-salt) reduce amount of salt
| * bcb8b78 (experiment) maybe little bit less cilantro
| * f6ec7b7 let us try with some cilantro
|/
* e7cf023 (main) don't forget to enjoy
* 79161b6 add half an onion
* a3394e3 adding README
* 3696246 adding instructions
* f146d25 adding ingredients

Here is a graphical representation of what we have created:

Now switch to main.
In a new commit, improve the README.md file (we added the word “Guacamole”):
```
# Guacamole recipe

This is an exercise repository.
```

Now you should have this situation:

$ git graph

* b4af65b (HEAD -> main) improve the documentation
| * bf28166 (less-salt) reduce amount of salt
|/
| * bcb8b78 (experiment) maybe little bit less cilantro
| * f6ec7b7 let us try with some cilantro
|/
* e7cf023 don't forget to enjoy
* 79161b6 add half an onion
* a3394e3 adding README
* 3696246 adding instructions
* f146d25 adding ingredients

And for comparison this is how it looks on GitHub.

Branch-2: Merge branches

Merge experiment and less-salt back into main following the lesson below until the point where we start deleting branches.

(optional) Branch-3: Perform a fast-forward merge

Create a new branch from main and switch to it.
Create a couple of commits on the new branch (for instance edit README.md):
Now switch to main.
Merge the new branch to main.
Examine the result with git graph.
Have you expected the result? Discuss what you see.

Solution

You will see that in this case no merge commit was created and Git merged the two branches by moving (fast-forwarding) the “main” branch (label) three commits forward.

This was possible since one branch is the ancestor of the other and their developments did not diverge.

A merge that does not require any merge commit is a fast-forward merge.

(optional) Branch-4: Rebase a branch (instead of merge)

As an alternative to merging branches, one can also rebase branches. Rebasing means that the new commits are replayed on top of another branch (instead of creating an explicit merge commit). Note that rebasing changes history and should not be done on public commits!

Create a new branch, and make a couple of commits on it.
Switch back to main, and make a couple of commits on it.
Inspect the situation with git graph.
Now rebase the new branch on top of main by first switching to the new branch, and then git rebase main.
Inspect again the situation with git graph. Notice that the commit hashes have changed - think about why!

Solution

You will notice two things:

History is now linear and does not contain merge commits.
All the commit hashes that were on the branch that got rebased, have changed. This also demonstrates that git rebase is a command that alters history. The commit history looks as if the rebased commits were all done after the main commits.

Branch-5: Test your understanding

Which of the following combos (one or more) creates a new branch and makes a commit to it?

$ git branch new-branch
$ git add file.txt
$ git commit

$ git add file.txt
$ git branch new-branch
$ git switch new-branch
$ git commit

$ git switch --create new-branch
$ git add file.txt
$ git commit

$ git switch new-branch
$ git add file.txt
$ git commit

Solution

Both 2 and 3 would do the job. Note that in 2 we first stage the file, and then create the branch and commit to it. In 1 we create the branch but do not switch to it, while in 4 we don’t give the --create flag to git switch to create the new branch.

Conflict resolution

In conflicts.md:

Conflict-1: Create another conflict and resolve

In this exercise, we repeat almost exactly what we did above with a different ingredient.

Create two branches before making any modifications.
Again modify some ingredient on both branches.
Merge one, merge the other and observe a conflict, resolve the conflict and commit the merge.
What happens if you apply the same modification on both branches?
If you create a branch like-avocados, commit a change, then from this branch create another banch dislike-avocados, commit again, and try to merge both branches into main you will not see a conflict. Can you explain, why it is different this time?

Solution

4: No conflict in this case if the change is the same.

5: No conflict in this case since in Git history one change happened after the other. The two changes are related and linked by Git history and one is a Git ancestor of the other. Git will assume that since we applied one change after the other, we meant this. There is nothing to resolve.

In conflicts.md:

(optional) Conflict-2: Resolve a conflict when rebasing a branch

Create two branches where you anticipate a conflict.
Try to merge them and observe that indeed they conflict.
Abort the merge with git merge --abort.
What do you expect will happen if you rebase one branch on top of the other? Do you anticipate a conflict? Try it out.

Solution

Yes, this will conflict. If it conflicts during a merge, it will also conflict during rebase but the conflict resolution looks slightly different: You still need to look for conflict markers but you tell Git that you resolved a conflict with git add and then you continue with git rebase --continue. Follow instructions that you get from the Git command line.

In conflicts.md:

(optional) Conflict-3: Resolve a conflict using mergetool

Again create a conflict (for instance disagree on the number of avocados).

Stop at this stage:

Auto-merging ingredients.txt
CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in ingredients.txt
Automatic merge failed; fix conflicts and then commit the result.

Instead of resolving the conflict manually, use a visual tool (requires installing one of the visual diff tools):
```
$ git mergetool
```
Your current branch is left, the branch you merge is right, result is in the middle.
After you are done, close and commit, git add is not needed when using git mergetool.

If you have not instructed Git to avoid creating backups when using mergetool, then to be on the safe side there will be additional temporary files created. To remove those you can do a git clean after the merging.

To view what will be removed:

$ git clean -n

To remove:

$ git clean -f

To configure Git to avoid creating backups at all:

$ git config --global mergetool.keepBackup false

Using the Git staging area

In staging-area.md:

Staging-1: Perform an interactive commit

One option to help us create nice logical commits is to stage interactively with git commit --patch:

Make two changes in instructions.txt, at the top and bottom of the file. Make sure that they are separated by at least several unmodified lines.
Run git commit --patch. Using the keystrokes above, commit one of the changes.
Do it again for the other change.
When you’re done, inspect the situation with git log, git status, git diff and git diff --staged.
When would this be useful?

Solution

This can be useful if you have several modification in a file (or several files) but you decide that it would be beneficial to save them as two (or more) separate commits.

In staging-area.md:

Staging-2: Use the staging area to make a commit in two steps

In your recipe example, make two different changes to ingredients.txt and instructions.txt which do not go together.
Use git add to stage one of the changes.
Use git status to see what’s going on, and use git diff and git diff --staged to see the changes.
Feel some regret and unstage the staged change.

Undoing and recovering

Undoing-1: Revert a commit

Create a commit (commit A).
Revert the commit with git revert (commit B).
Inspect the history with git log --oneline.
Now try git show on both the reverted (commit A) and the newly created commit (commit B).

Undoing-2: Modify a previous commit

Make an incomplete change to the recipe or a typo in your change, git add and git commit the incomplete/unsatisfactory change.
Inspect the unsatisfactory but committed change with git show. Remember or write down the commit hash.
Now complete/fix the change but instead of creating a new commit, add the correction to the previous commit with git add, followed by git commit --amend. What changed?

Solution

One thing that has changed now is the commit hash. Modifying the previous commit has changed the history. This is OK to do on commits that other people don’t depend on yet.

Undoing-3: Destroy our experimentation in this episode

After we have experimented with reverts and amending, let us destroy all of that and get our repositories to a similar state.

First, we will look at our history (git log/git graph) and find the last commit HASH before our tests.
Then, we will git reset --hard HASH to that.
Then, git graph again to see what happened.

$ git log --oneline

d3fc63a (HEAD -> main) Revert "not sure this is a good idea"
e02efcd not sure this is a good idea
b4af65b improve the documentation
e7cf023 don't forget to enjoy
79161b6 add half an onion
a3394e3 adding README
3696246 adding instructions
f146d25 adding ingredients

$ git reset --hard b4af65b

HEAD is now at b4af65b improve the documentation

$ git log --oneline

b4af65b (HEAD -> main) improve the documentation
e7cf023 don't forget to enjoy
79161b6 add half an onion
a3394e3 adding README
3696246 adding instructions
f146d25 adding ingredients