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This tutorial is based on Pro Git book, written by Scott Chacon, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 3.0 license.

Installing Git

  • Many Linux distributions provide packages for git, for example on Ubuntu you can install git by typing:
 sudo apt-get install git
  • Git for Windows is provided by the |msysgit project.
  • On Mac OS, the easiest way is to use the dmg packages provided by the Git for OS X project.


Configure your user and email for Git via the following command.

 # Configure the user which will be used by git
 # Provide your full name
 git config --global "Example Surname"
 # Same for the email address
 git config --global "" 

Git Basics - Just for Understanding

Our two main branches are:


The master branch is used to our development, while stable branch should be in a state that allow a release at any time.

Local and remote repositories

In a distributed version control system everyone has a complete copy of the source code (including the complete history of the source code) and can perform version control operations against this local copy.

Git performs commits to your local repository and you can synchronize your repository with other (remote) repositories. Git allows you to clone repositories, e.g. create an exact copy of a repository including the complete history of the source code. The owners of repositories can synchronize changes via push (transferring changes to a remote repository) or pull (getting changes from a remote repository).

In oofem project, everyone can clone the reference repository at If you want to contribute to the project, you make your development in your local repository. Then send your contribution to one of the lieutenants, responsible for merging the developers’ topic branches into the develop branch of reference repository. For more details on how to contribute follow Contributing to OOFEM.

Cloning oofem repository


 $ git clone

Staging Modified Files

If you modify a file and you want to persist this change in the repository you need to perform two steps. First you need to mark them to be relevant for Git. Afterwards you add this change to the Git repository.

Marking changes as relevant for the version control is called staging or to add them to the index. Adding the changes to the repository is called committing.

For example, if you make a change in a file and want that this change is relevant for the next commit, you have to add the file to the via the

  git add file 

To commit marked changes into your local Git repository, use git commit command

  git commit -m "your commit message"  

The commit does not go to a remote server ( - this is the major difference with svn.

Viewing Your Staged and Unstaged Changes

The main command you use to determine which files are in which state is the git status command. If you run this command, you should see something like this:

 $ git status
 # On branch master
 # Changes to be committed:
 #   new file:   README
 # Changed but not updated:
 #   modified:   benchmarks.rb

Committing Your Changes to Local Repository

When the staging area is set up, you can commit your changes to local repository. Please note, that anything that is still unstaged — any files you have created or modified won’t go into this commit. They will stay as modified files on your disk. The simplest way to commit is to type git commit:

  $ git commit

This will launches the editor, allowing you to enter your commit message. Alternatively, you can type your commit message inline with the commit command by specifying it after a -m flag, like this:

  $ git commit -m "Fixing benchmark test"

Viewing the Commit History

You can show the history of commits in the current branch using git log command

  git log

Or, alternatively, you can use a nice graphical view of the changes

  gitk --all 

Working with remote branches

When a repository is cloned, git automatically creates a master branch that tracks origin/master. You can set up other tracking branches if you wish — ones that don’t track branches on origin and don’t track the master branch.

One can see all branches in the repository using git branch:

  $ git branch
  * master

To track remote branch, for example the develop branch on origin, use

  $ git checkout -b stable origin/stable

If you have Git version 1.6.2 or later, you can also use the –track shorthand:

  $ git checkout --track origin/stable

You can switch between branches using git checkout <branchname>.

  $ git checkout stable

If you now call git branch, you will see that a new branch named stable has been set up and is the active one:

  $ git branch
  * stable

To synchronize your work, you run

  $ git pull origin

This command looks up which server origin is, fetches any data from it that you don’t yet have, and updates your local database, moving your origin/master pointer to its new, more up-to-date position. It merges files from remote server with your data. The command $ git fetch origin only downloads files without merging them.

Contributing to OOFEM - Practical workflow

For people without write permissions to the GitHub oofem repository, the preferred way is to create a pull requests to propose and collaborate on changes in repository. The changes are proposed in a separate branch.

You can read more about Creating a pull requests on GitHub help pages.

Typically, one have to create a fork, or copy, of the repository. Forks let you make changes to a project without affecting the original repository. You can fetch updates from or submit changes to the original repository using pull requests.

If you have write access to the repository, you can also create branch directly within oofem repository. This should be reserved only to agreed, long-term, project-wide branches. For day-to-day and personal development, the forks are recommended.

After you have created a pull request, you can ask a specific person to review the changes you've proposed. In OOFEM, these people ('lieutenants') are in charge of a specific subsystem of the project and they merge in all changes related to that subsystem and push them to the reference (blessed) repository that everyone can clone from again.

Before contributing, please make sure you have followed oofem coding conventions.


  • Online version of GitHub help. Higly recommended!
  • Online version of Git book. Higly recommended!
git-tutorial.txt · Last modified: 2017/11/01 09:08 by bp