Version control (Part 1)

Pre-lecture materials

Read ahead

Read ahead

Before class, you can prepare by reading the following materials:

• Software Carpentry: Version Control with Git

Acknowledgements

Material for this lecture was borrowed and adopted from

• Software Carpentry: Version Control with Git

Learning objectives

Learning objectives

At the end of this lesson you will:

• Understand the benefits of an automated version control system.
• Understand how to set up git.
• Understand how to set up a git repository.
• Understand how to track changes, explore history, and ignore files in a git repository.

Introduction

Questions

• What is version control and why should I use it?

Objectives

• Understand the benefits of an automated version control system.
• Understand the basics of how automated version control systems work.

We’ll start by exploring how version control can be used to keep track of what one person did and when.

For a nice illustration, we will refer to the Software Carpentry: Version Control with Git lesson materials.

Overview

We’ve all been in this situation before: it seems unnecessary to have multiple nearly-identical versions of the same document. Some word processors let us deal with this a little better, such as Microsoft Word’s Track Changes or Google Docs’ version history.

Version control systems start with a base version of the document and then record changes you make each step of the way.

For example, two users can make independent sets of changes on the same document.

Unless multiple users make changes to the same section of the document - a conflict - you can incorporate two sets of changes into the same base document.

A version control system is a tool that keeps track of these changes for us, effectively creating different versions of our files.

It allows us to decide which changes will be made to the next version (each record of these changes is called a commit), and keeps useful metadata about them. The complete history of commits for a particular project and their metadata make up a repository. Repositories can be kept in sync across different computers, facilitating collaboration among different people.

Terminology

• commit: a record of each set of changes in a document or file
• repository: the complete history of commits for a particular project and their metadata

Key Points

• Version control is like an unlimited ‘undo’.
• Version control also allows many people to work in parallel.

Setting Up Git

Questions

• How do I get set up to use Git?

Objectives

• Configure git the first time it is used on a computer.
• Understand the meaning of the --global configuration flag.

When we use Git on a new computer for the first time, we need to configure a few things:

• our name and email address
• what our preferred text editor is
• and that we want to use these settings globally (i.e. for every project).

On a command line, Git commands are written as git verb options, where verb is what we actually want to do and options is additional optional information.

Here is how to set up Git on a new laptop:

$ git config --global user.name "My Name"
$ git config --global user.email "myemail@email.com"

This user name and email will be associated with your subsequent Git activity after this lesson.

For this lesson, we will be interacting with GitHub and so the email address used should be the same as the one used when setting up your GitHub account.

Check settings

You can check your settings at any time:

$ git config --list

Git Help and Manual

If you forget the options of a git command, you can type git <command> -h or access the corresponding Git manual by typing git <command> --help, e.g.:

$ git config -h
$ git config --help

You can press Q to exit the manual.

You can also get the list of available git commands and further resources of the Git manual typing:

$ git help

Key Points

• Use git config with the --global option to configure a user name, email address, editor, and other preferences once per machine.

Note that we will omit the $ from shell commands shown from here onwards to make it easier to run them interactively in this tutorial.

Creating a Repository

Questions

• Where does Git store information?

Objectives

• Create a local Git repository.
• Describe the purpose of the .git directory.

Once Git is configured, we can start using it.

First, let’s create a new directory in the Desktop folder for our work and then change the current working directory to the newly created one:

cd ~/Desktop
mkdir planets
cd planets

pwd

/Users/lukas/Desktop/planets

Then we tell Git to make planets a repository – a place where Git can store versions of our files:

git init

Note that the creation of the planets directory and its initialization as a repository are completely separate processes.

If we use ls to show the directory’s contents, it appears that nothing has changed:

ls

But if we add the -a flag to show everything, we can see that Git has created a hidden directory within planets called .git:

ls -a

.   ..  .git

Git uses this special subdirectory to store all the information about the project, including the tracked files and sub-directories located within the project’s directory.

If we ever delete the .git subdirectory, we will lose the project’s history.

Next, we will change the default branch to be called main. This might be the default branch depending on your settings and version of git.

git checkout -b main

Switched to a new branch 'main'

We can check that everything is set up correctly by asking Git to tell us the status of our project:

git status

On branch main

No commits yet

nothing to commit (create/copy files and use "git add" to track)

Correcting git init Mistakes

Suppose you have created the Git repository in the wrong directory, or made some other mistake.

You can delete the git repository by simply deleting the .git directory, either in Finder / Windows Explorer or from the command line:

rm -rf .git

But be careful! Running this command in the wrong directory will remove the entire Git history of a project you might want to keep. Therefore, always check your current directory using the command pwd.

Key Points

• git init initializes a repository.
• Git stores all of its repository data in the .git directory.

Tracking Changes

Questions

• How do I record changes in Git?
• How do I check the status of my version control repository?
• How do I record notes about what changes I made and why?

Objectives

• Go through the modify-add-commit cycle for one or more files.
• Explain where information is stored at each stage of that cycle.
• Distinguish between descriptive and non-descriptive commit messages.

First let’s make sure we’re still in the right directory. You should be in the planets directory.

cd ~/Desktop/planets
pwd

/Users/lukas/Desktop/planets

Adding a new file

Let’s create a file called mars.txt that contains some notes about the Red Planet’s suitability as a base.

We will use touch to create the file, and then open it in TextEdit or Notepad. Alternatively, you can use a command-line text editor such as nano.

touch mars.txt

Navigate to the directory in Finder / Windows Explorer and open the .txt file in TextEdit / Notepad.

Type the text below into the mars.txt file:

Cold and dry, but everything is my favorite color

Let’s first verify that the file was properly created by running the list command (ls):

ls

mars.txt contains a single line, which we can see by running:

cat mars.txt

Cold and dry, but everything is my favorite color

If we check the status of our project again, Git tells us that it’s noticed the new file:

git status

On branch main

No commits yet

Untracked files:
   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)

    mars.txt

nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)

The “untracked files” message means that there’s a file in the directory that Git isn’t keeping track of. We can tell Git to track a file using git add:

git add mars.txt

and then check that the right thing happened:

git status

On branch main

No commits yet

Changes to be committed:
  (use "git rm --cached <file>..." to unstage)

    new file:   mars.txt

Git now knows that it’s supposed to keep track of mars.txt, but it hasn’t recorded these changes as a commit yet. To get it to do that, we need to run one more command:

git commit -m "Start notes on Mars as a base"

[main (root-commit) 7c806ef] Start notes on Mars as a base
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
 create mode 100644 mars.txt

When we run git commit, Git takes everything we have told it to save by using git add and stores a copy permanently inside the special .git directory. This permanent copy is called a commit (or revision) and its short identifier is 7c806ef. Your commit may have another identifier.

We use the -m flag (for “message”) to record a short, descriptive, and specific comment that will help us remember later on what we did and why. If we just run git commit without the -m option, Git will launch nano (or whatever other editor is configured as core.editor) so that we can write a longer message.

Good commit messages start with a brief (<50 characters) statement about the changes made in the commit. Generally, the message should complete the sentence “If applied, this commit will”. If you want to go into more detail, add a blank line between the summary line and your additional notes. Use this additional space to explain why you made changes and/or what their impact will be.

If we run git status now:

git status

On branch main
nothing to commit, working tree clean

it tells us everything is up to date. If we want to know what we’ve done recently, we can ask Git to show us the project’s history using git log:

git log

commit 7c806ef264455022f29ee71a5bc9972fa17b634b (HEAD -> main)
Author: Lukas Weber <lukas.weber.edu@gmail.com>
Date:   Tue Nov 8 11:57:09 2022 -0500

    Start notes on Mars as a base

git log lists all commits made to a repository in reverse chronological order.

Adding changes to a file

Now suppose we add more information to the file. (Again, we’ll edit with TextEdit / Notepad and then cat the file to show its contents.)

Paste the following text into the file:

Cold and dry, but everything is my favorite color
The two moons may be a problem for Wolfman

When we run git status now, it tells us that a file it already knows about has been modified:

git status

On branch main
Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)

    modified:   mars.txt

no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

The last line is the key phrase: “no changes added to commit”. We have changed this file, but we haven’t told Git we will want to save those changes (which we do with git add) nor have we saved them (which we do with git commit).

So let’s do that now. It is good practice to always review our changes before saving them. We do this using git diff. This shows us the differences between the current state of the file and the most recently saved version:

git diff

diff --git a/mars.txt b/mars.txt
index df0654a..315bf3a 100644
--- a/mars.txt
+++ b/mars.txt
@@ -1 +1,2 @@
 Cold and dry, but everything is my favorite color
+The two moons may be a problem for Wolfman

The output is cryptic because it is actually a series of commands for tools like editors and patch telling them how to reconstruct one file given the other.

After reviewing our change, it’s time to commit it:

git commit -m "Add concerns about effects of Mars' moons on Wolfman"

On branch main
Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)

    modified:   mars.txt

no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

Whoops: Git won’t commit because we didn’t use git add first. Let’s fix that:

git add mars.txt
git commit -m "Add concerns about effects of Mars' moons on Wolfman"

[main 58f8cda] Add concerns about effects of Mars' moons on Wolfman
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

Staging area

Git insists that we add files to the set we want to commit before actually committing anything. This allows us to commit our changes in stages and capture changes in logical portions rather than only large batches.

To allow for this, Git has a special staging area where it keeps track of things that have been added but not yet committed.

Staging Area

If you think of Git as taking snapshots of changes over the life of a project, git add specifies what will go in a snapshot (putting things in the staging area), and git commit then actually takes the snapshot, and makes a permanent record of it (as a commit).

If you don’t have anything staged when you type git commit, Git will prompt you to use git commit -a or git commit --all, which will add all files. However, it’s almost always better to explicitly add things to the staging area, because you might commit changes you forgot you made.

Try to stage things manually, or you might find yourself searching for “git undo commit” more than you would like!

Let’s watch as our changes to a file move from our editor to the staging area and into long-term storage. First, we’ll add another line to the file:

cat mars.txt

Cold and dry, but everything is my favorite color
The two moons may be a problem for Wolfman
But the Mummy will appreciate the lack of humidity

git diff

diff --git a/mars.txt b/mars.txt
index 315bf3a..b36abfd 100644
--- a/mars.txt
+++ b/mars.txt
@@ -1,2 +1,3 @@
 Cold and dry, but everything is my favorite color
 The two moons may be a problem for Wolfman
+But the Mummy will appreciate the lack of humidity

So far, so good: we’ve added one line to the end of the file (shown with a + in the first column). Now let’s put that change in the staging area and see what git diff reports:

git add mars.txt
git diff

There is no output: as far as Git can tell, there’s no difference between what it’s been asked to save permanently and what’s currently in the directory. However, if we do this:

git diff --staged

diff --git a/mars.txt b/mars.txt
index 315bf3a..b36abfd 100644
--- a/mars.txt
+++ b/mars.txt
@@ -1,2 +1,3 @@
 Cold and dry, but everything is my favorite color
 The two moons may be a problem for Wolfman
+But the Mummy will appreciate the lack of humidity

it shows us the difference between the last committed change and what’s in the staging area. Let’s save our changes:

git commit -m "Discuss concerns about Mars' climate for Mummy"

[main 5aa34b9] Discuss concerns about Mars' climate for Mummy
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

check our status:

git status

On branch main
nothing to commit, working tree clean

and look at the history of what we’ve done so far:

git log

commit 5aa34b9344976e2cf37e8f69bfb374a5798921ea (HEAD -> main)
Author: Lukas Weber <lukas.weber.edu@gmail.com>
Date:   Tue Nov 8 12:01:23 2022 -0500

    Discuss concerns about Mars' climate for Mummy

commit 58f8cdaf5b99f730cce460f35d8698f112dfb911
Author: Lukas Weber <lukas.weber.edu@gmail.com>
Date:   Tue Nov 8 11:59:39 2022 -0500

    Add concerns about effects of Mars' moons on Wolfman

commit 7c806ef264455022f29ee71a5bc9972fa17b634b
Author: Lukas Weber <lukas.weber.edu@gmail.com>
Date:   Tue Nov 8 11:57:09 2022 -0500

    Start notes on Mars as a base

Word-based diffing

Sometimes, e.g. in the case of the text documents a line-wise diff is too coarse. That is where the --color-words option of git diff comes in very useful as it highlights the changed words using colors.

Paging the Log

If the output of git log is too long to fit in your screen, Git splits it into pages.

To get out of the pager, press Q.

To move to the next page, press Spacebar.

Directories

Two important facts you should know about directories in Git.

First, Git does not track directories on their own, only files within them. Try it for yourself:

mkdir spaceships
git status
git add spaceships
git status

On branch main
nothing to commit, working tree clean

Note, our newly created empty directory spaceships does not appear in the list of untracked files even if we explicitly add it (via git add) to our repository.

Second, if you create a directory in your Git repository and populate it with files, you can add all files in the directory at once by:

git add <directory-with-files>

Try it for yourself:

touch spaceships/apollo-11 spaceships/sputnik-1
git status
git add spaceships
git status

On branch main
Changes to be committed:
  (use "git restore --staged <file>..." to unstage)
        new file:   spaceships/apollo-11
        new file:   spaceships/sputnik-1

Before moving on, we will commit these changes.

git commit -m "Add some initial thoughts on spaceships"

[main 359fc60] Add some initial thoughts on spaceships
 2 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 spaceships/apollo-11
 create mode 100644 spaceships/sputnik-1

To recap, when we want to add changes to our repository, we first need to add the changed files to the staging area (git add) and then commit the staged changes to the repository (git commit).

For a visualization of this workflow, see the Software Carpentry: Version Control with Git page.

Exercises

Choosing a Commit Message

Which of the following commit messages would be most appropriate for the last commit made to mars.txt?

1. “Changes”
2. “Added line ‘But the Mummy will appreciate the lack of humidity’ to mars.txt”
3. “Discuss effects of Mars’ climate on the Mummy”

Committing Changes to Git

Which command(s) below would save the changes of myfile.txt to my 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"

Additional exercises are available on the Software Carpentry: Version Control with Git page.

Key Points

• git status shows the status of a repository.
• Files can be stored in a project’s working directory (which users see), the staging area (where the next commit is being built up) and the local repository (where commits are permanently recorded).
• git add puts files in the staging area.
• git commit saves the staged content as a new commit in the local repository.
• Write a commit message that accurately describes your changes.

Exploring History

Questions

• How can I identify old versions of files?
• How do I review my changes?
• How can I recover old versions of files?

Objectives

• Explain what the HEAD of a repository is and how to use it.
• Identify and use Git commit numbers.
• Compare various versions of tracked files.
• Restore old versions of files.

As we saw in the previous episode, we can refer to commits by their identifiers. You can refer to the most recent commit of the working directory by using the identifier HEAD.

Let’s make a change to mars.txt, adding yet another line.

cat mars.txt

Cold and dry, but everything is my favorite color
The two moons may be a problem for Wolfman
But the Mummy will appreciate the lack of humidity
An ill-considered change

Now, let’s see what we get.

git diff HEAD mars.txt

diff --git a/mars.txt b/mars.txt
index b36abfd..93a3e13 100644
--- a/mars.txt
+++ b/mars.txt
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
 Cold and dry, but everything is my favorite color
 The two moons may be a problem for Wolfman
 But the Mummy will appreciate the lack of humidity
+An ill-considered change

which is the same as what you would get if you leave out HEAD (try it).

You can refer to previous commits by adding ~1 (where “~” is “tilde”) to refer to the commit one before HEAD.

git diff HEAD~1 mars.txt

If we want to see the differences between older commits we can use git diff again, but with the notation HEAD~1, HEAD~2, and so on, to refer to them:

git diff HEAD~3 mars.txt

diff --git a/mars.txt b/mars.txt
index df0654a..93a3e13 100644
--- a/mars.txt
+++ b/mars.txt
@@ -1 +1,4 @@
 Cold and dry, but everything is my favorite color
+The two moons may be a problem for Wolfman
+But the Mummy will appreciate the lack of humidity
+An ill-considered change

We could also use git show which shows us what changes we made at an older commit as well as the commit message, rather than the differences between a commit and our working directory that we see by using git diff.

git show HEAD~3 mars.txt

commit 7c806ef264455022f29ee71a5bc9972fa17b634b
Author: Lukas Weber <lukas.weber.edu@gmail.com>
Date:   Tue Nov 8 11:57:09 2022 -0500

    Start notes on Mars as a base

diff --git a/mars.txt b/mars.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..df0654a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mars.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Cold and dry, but everything is my favorite color

In this way, we can build up a chain of commits. The most recent end of the chain is referred to as HEAD; we can refer to previous commits using the ~ notation, so HEAD~1 means “the previous commit”.

We can also refer to commits using those long strings of digits and letters that git log displays. These are unique IDs for the changes, and “unique” really does mean unique: every change to any set of files on any computer has a unique 40-character identifier. Our first commit was given the ID f22b25e3233b4645dabd0d81e651fe074bd8e73b, so let’s try this:

git diff 7c806ef264455022f29ee71a5bc9972fa17b634b mars.txt

diff --git a/mars.txt b/mars.txt
index df0654a..93a3e13 100644
--- a/mars.txt
+++ b/mars.txt
@@ -1 +1,4 @@
 Cold and dry, but everything is my favorite color
+The two moons may be a problem for Wolfman
+But the Mummy will appreciate the lack of humidity
+An ill-considered change

Git lets us use just the first few characters (typically seven):

git diff 7c806ef mars.txt

diff --git a/mars.txt b/mars.txt
index df0654a..93a3e13 100644
--- a/mars.txt
+++ b/mars.txt
@@ -1 +1,4 @@
 Cold and dry, but everything is my favorite color
+The two moons may be a problem for Wolfman
+But the Mummy will appreciate the lack of humidity
+An ill-considered change

Restoring older versions

All right! So we can save changes to files and see what we’ve changed.

Now, how can we restore older versions of things? Let’s suppose we change our mind about the last update to mars.txt.

git status now tells us that the file has been changed, but those changes haven’t been staged:

git status

On branch main
Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)

    modified:   mars.txt

no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

We can put things back the way they were by using git checkout:

git checkout HEAD mars.txt
cat mars.txt

Cold and dry, but everything is my favorite color
The two moons may be a problem for Wolfman
But the Mummy will appreciate the lack of humidity

As you might guess from its name, git checkout checks out (i.e., restores) an old version of a file. In this case, we’re telling Git that we want to recover the version of the file recorded in HEAD, which is the last saved commit.

If we want to go back even further, we can use a commit identifier instead:

git checkout 7c806ef mars.txt

Updated 1 path from 12125a8

cat mars.txt

Cold and dry, but everything is my favorite color

git status

On branch main
Changes to be committed:
  (use "git restore --staged <file>..." to unstage)
        modified:   mars.txt

Notice that the changes are currently in the staging area. Again, we can put things back the way they were by using git checkout:

git checkout HEAD mars.txt

Updated 1 path from aab57ac

Don’t Lose Your HEAD

Above we used

git checkout 7c806ef mars.txt

to revert mars.txt to its state after the commit 7c806ef.

But be careful! The command checkout has other important functionalities and Git will misunderstand your intentions if you are not accurate with the typing.

For example, if you forget mars.txt in the previous command.

git checkout 7c806ef

Note: switching to '7c806ef'.

You are in 'detached HEAD' state. You can look around, make experimental
changes and commit them, and you can discard any commits you make in this
state without impacting any branches by switching back to a branch.

If you want to create a new branch to retain commits you create, you may
do so (now or later) by using -c with the switch command. Example:

  git switch -c <new-branch-name>

Or undo this operation with:

  git switch -

Turn off this advice by setting config variable advice.detachedHead to false

HEAD is now at 7c806ef Start notes on Mars as a base

The “detached HEAD” state lets you look around without the repository without making any changes, so you shouldn’t make any changes in this state. After investigating your repository’s past state, reattach your HEAD with git checkout main.

git checkout main

Previous HEAD position was 7c806ef Start notes on Mars as a base
Switched to branch 'main'

Sequence of commits

It’s important to remember that we must use the commit number that identifies the state of the repository before the change we’re trying to undo. A common mistake is to use the number of the commit in which we made the change we’re trying to discard.

For some additional visualizations, see the Software Carpentry: Version Control with Git page.

Simplifying the Common Case

If you read the output of git status carefully, you’ll see that it includes this hint:

(use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)

As it says, git checkout without a version identifier restores files to the state saved in HEAD. The double dash -- is needed to separate the names of the files being recovered from the command itself: without it, Git would try to use the name of the file as the commit identifier.

The fact that files can be reverted one by one tends to change the way people organize their work. If everything is in one large document, it’s hard (but not impossible) to undo changes to the introduction without also undoing changes made later to the conclusion. If the introduction and conclusion are stored in separate files, on the other hand, moving backward and forward in time becomes much easier.

Exercises

Recovering Older Versions of a File

Jennifer has made changes to the R script that she has been working on for weeks, and the modifications she made this morning “broke” the script and it no longer runs. She has spent ~ 1hr trying to fix it, with no luck…

Luckily, she has been keeping track of her project’s versions using Git! Which commands below will let her recover the last committed version of her R script called data_cruncher.R?

1. git checkout HEAD
2. git checkout HEAD data_cruncher.R
3. git checkout HEAD~1 data_cruncher.R
4. git checkout <unique ID of last commit> data_cruncher.R
5. Both 2 and 4

Reverting a Commit

Jennifer is collaborating with colleagues on her R script. She realizes her last commit to the project’s repository contained an error, and wants to undo it. Jennifer wants to undo correctly so everyone in the project’s repository gets the correct change. The command git revert [erroneous commit ID] will create a new commit that reverses the erroneous commit.

The command git revert is different from git checkout [commit ID] because git checkout returns the files not yet committed within the local repository to a previous state, whereas git revert reverses changes committed to the local and project repositories.

Below are the right steps and explanations for Jennifer to use git revert, what is the missing command?

1. ________ # Look at the git history of the project to find the commit ID
2. Copy the ID (the first few characters of the ID, e.g. 0b1d055).
3. git revert [commit ID]
4. Type in the new commit message.
5. Save and close

Checking Understanding of git diff

Consider this command: git diff HEAD~9 mars.txt. What do you predict this command will do if you execute it? What happens when you do execute it? Why?

Try another command, git diff [ID] mars.txt, where [ID] is replaced with the unique identifier for your most recent commit. What do you think will happen, and what does happen?

Additional exercises are available on the Software Carpentry: Version Control with Git page.

Key Points

• git diff displays differences between commits.
• git checkout recovers old versions of files.

Ignoring Things

Questions

• How can I tell Git to ignore files I don’t want to track?

Objectives

• Configure Git to ignore specific files.
• Explain why ignoring files can be useful.

What if we have files that we do not want Git to track for us, like backup files created by our editor or intermediate files created during data analysis? Let’s create a few dummy files:

mkdir results
touch a.dat b.dat c.dat results/a.out results/b.out

and see what Git says:

git status

On branch main
Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)

    a.dat
    b.dat
    c.dat
    results/

nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)

Putting these files under version control would be a waste of disk space. What’s worse, having them all listed could distract us from changes that actually matter, so let’s tell Git to ignore them.

We do this by creating a file in the root directory of our project called .gitignore:

touch .gitignore

Open the file in TextEdit / Notepad, or alternatively from the command line using nano.

Note this is a hidden file (filename beginning with .), so you will need to enable Finder / Windows Explorer to show hidden files.

Add the following lines in the .gitignore file and save it.

*.dat
results/

cat .gitignore

These patterns tell Git to ignore any file whose name ends in .dat and everything in the results directory.

Adding existing files in .gitignore

Note that if any of these files were already being tracked, Git would continue to track them.

Once we have created this file, the output of git status is much cleaner:

git status

On branch main
Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)

    .gitignore

nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)

The only thing Git notices now is the newly-created .gitignore file. You might think we wouldn’t want to track it, but everyone we’re sharing our repository with will probably want to ignore the same things that we’re ignoring. Let’s add and commit .gitignore:

git add .gitignore
git commit -m "Ignore data files and the results folder."
git status

On branch main
nothing to commit, working tree clean

As a bonus, using .gitignore helps us avoid accidentally adding files to the repository that we don’t want to track:

git add a.dat

The following paths are ignored by one of your .gitignore files:
a.dat
Use -f if you really want to add them.

If we really want to override our ignore settings, we can use git add -f to force Git to add something. For example, git add -f a.dat. We can also always see the status of ignored files if we want:

git status --ignored

On branch main
Ignored files:
 (use "git add -f <file>..." to include in what will be committed)

        a.dat
        b.dat
        c.dat
        results/

nothing to commit, working tree clean

Exercises

Ignoring Nested Files

Given a directory structure that looks like:

results/data
results/plots

How would you ignore only results/plots and not results/data?

Including Specific Files

How would you ignore all .dat files in your root directory except for final.dat?

Hint: Find out what ! (the exclamation point operator) does.

The exclamation point operator will include a previously excluded entry.

Ignoring all data Files in a Directory

Assuming you have an empty .gitignore file, and given a directory structure that looks like:

results/data/position/gps/a.dat
results/data/position/gps/b.dat
results/data/position/gps/c.dat
results/data/position/gps/info.txt
results/plots

What’s the shortest .gitignore rule you could write to ignore all .dat files in result/data/position/gps? Do not ignore the info.txt.

Ignoring all data Files in the repository

Let us assume you have many .dat files in different subdirectories of your repository. For example, you might have:

results/a.dat
data/experiment_1/b.dat
data/experiment_2/c.dat
data/experiment_2/variation_1/d.dat

How do you ignore all the .dat files, without explicitly listing the names of the corresponding folders?

Additional exercises are available on the Software Carpentry: Version Control with Git page.

Key Points

• The .gitignore file tells Git what files to ignore.

Post-lecture materials

Preparation for next lesson

In the next lesson, we will learn how to use git remotes and GitHub. As preparation, you can sign up for a GitHub account if you do not already have one.