Beginning Drupal 8

Chapter 16 ■ Using Git
Installing Git on OS X
Installing Git on OS X is accomplished through the graphical installer that is available at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/git-osx-installer. This simple-to-use tool provides a quick way
to successfully install Git on your Mac. Download the dmg file, click it to launch the installer, and follow
the instructions. Once it’s installed, test to ensure that Git is installed by launching a terminal window and
typing git at the command prompt and pressing Return. You should see a list of Git commands if Git is
installed correctly. If you do not see a list of commands, visit http://git-scm.com for help.
Installing Git on Windows
To install Git on Windows, download the Git installer exe file from http://msygit.github.io. The Windows
installer installs Git tools that allow you to execute Git commands from a terminal window and installs a
GUI tool for managing your Git repositories. After installing, launch a terminal window, enter git at the
command line, and press Enter. You should see a list of Git commands. If you do not see a list of commands,
visit http://msygit.github.io for help.
Using Git
There are several basic Git commands that will propel you along the path of getting hooked on Git. The first
step in the process of using Git is to set up a Git repository where all of the items you wish to place under
revision control will be stored. Let’s use our Drupal 8 installation as our first Git project to place under
source control. Using a terminal window, navigate to the root directory of your Drupal 8 installation. In the
terminal window, type git init and press Return.
■■Note
The git init command will return an error message if you have already created a Git repository
for this site.
You should see something similar to this message:
Initialized empty Git repository in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/drupal8/.git/
If the repository was not successfully created visit the Git website for help on your specific errors.
With the repository created, the next step is to add elements to the repository. Since we haven’t added
any files yet, we will add all files in our Drupal 8 directory to Git. To do so, enter the following command:
git add –A.
Make sure you enter the period at the end of the command, as that signifies the current directory. If you
successfully added all the files to your repository, you should be returned to the command prompt without
any messages. If you enter git status at the command prompt and press Return, you should see a long list
of new files that were added to the repository but not yet committed.
The process of committing the files that were just added provides a snapshot that you can roll back to in
the event you make changes in the future that you need to revert to a previous state. How often you add and
commit files is up to you or your project team, the key point being that in order to have the ability to roll back
to a previous point in time, those files must have been added and committed. So let’s commit our Drupal 8
files to our Git repository using the following command:
git commit –m "initial commit to the repository"
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