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Once Git is configured, we can start using it.

We will continue with the story of Wolfman and Dracula who are developing a delicious guacamole recipe.

First, let’s create a directory for our work and then move into that directory:

$ mkdir guacamole
$ cd guacamole

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

$ git init

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 guacamole called .git:

$ ls -a

.	..	.git

Git uses this special sub-directory to store all the information about the project, including all files and sub-directories located within the project’s directory. If we ever delete the .git sub-directory, we will lose the project’s history.

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

$ git status

If you are using a different version of git than I am, then then the exact wording of the output might be slightly different.

# On branch master
#
# Initial commit
#
nothing to commit (create/copy files and use "git add" to track)

Places to Create Git Repositories

Along with tracking information about guacamole (the project we have already created), Dracula would also like to track information about salsa. Despite Wolfman’s concerns, Dracula creates a salsa project inside his guacamole project with the following sequence of commands:

$ cd             # return to home directory
$ cd guacamole     # go into guacamole directory, which is already a Git repository
$ ls -a          # ensure the .git sub-directory is still present in the guacamole directory
$ mkdir salsa    # make a sub-directory guacamole/salsa
$ cd salsa       # go into salsa sub-directory
$ git init       # make the salsa sub-directory a Git repository
$ ls -a          # ensure the .git sub-directory is present indicating we have created a new Git repository

Is the git init command, run inside the salsa sub-directory, required for tracking files stored in the salsa sub-directory?

Solution

No. Dracula does not need to make the salsa sub-directory a Git repository because the guacamole repository will track all files, sub-directories, and sub-directory files under the guacamole directory. Thus, in order to track all information about salsa, Dracula only needed to add the salsa sub-directory to the guacamole directory.

Additionally, Git repositories can interfere with each other if they are “nested” in the directory of another: the outer repository will try to version-control the inner repository. Therefore, it’s best to create each new Git repository in a separate directory. To be sure that there is no conflicting repository in the directory, check the output of git status. If it looks like the following, you are good to go to create a new repository as shown above:

$ git status

fatal: Not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git

Correcting git init Mistakes

Wolfman explains to Dracula how a nested repository is redundant and may cause confusion down the road. Dracula would like to remove the nested repository. How can Dracula undo his last git init in the salsa sub-directory?

Solution – USE WITH CAUTION!

To recover from this little mistake, Dracula can just remove the .git folder in the salsa subdirectory by running the following command from inside the ‘guacamole’ directory:

$ rm -rf salsa/.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.