Using Git GUI

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Revision as of 21:36, 19 June 2019 by Bmy (Talk | contribs) (Edit menu)

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Overview

On this page, we provide information about using the Git GUI interface.

The Git Graphical User Interface (GUI)

We recommend using the git gui for source code management. Start this in your code directory:

     git gui &

This will open up a window that looks like this:

GitGui.png

On the left there are 2 windows:

  1. Unstaged Changes: An unstaged change is a modification that Git does not know about yet. If you modified any files since the last commit, then they should be displayed in this window. Also, right above this window you will find the name of the current checked-out branch.
  2. Staged Changes: These are changes that Git will add to the repository the very next time you make a commit.

In general, anytime you need to modify the source code, you should NOT do it on the master branch. You should create a new branch for your modifications. Then you can test your modifications ad nauseum until you are sure that everything is functioning as it should. When your modifications are complete, you can merge your branch into the master branch. You can then delete the branch you created.

The advantage of this approach is that if you ever need to start over from scratch, you can just go back to the master branch and you will get back the state of the code before your modifications were added.

Git Gui menus

Repository menu

GitGuiRepoMenu.png

The most important of these commands are:

  1. Visualize all branch history: This will open the Gitk browser so that you can view the revision history.
  2. Compress database: You can pack the database to reduce storage size.

Edit menu

GitGuiEditMenu.png

  1. The Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, and Select All menu items are self-explanatory.
  2. Options: will open a dialog box where you can customize the look and feel of the Git Gui (i.e. set colors, fonts, etc.)

Branch menu

GitGuiBranchMenu.png

This menu is pretty self-explanatory. You can choose to:

  1. Create a new branch
  2. Checkout an existing branch
  3. Rename a branch
  4. Delete a branch
  5. Reset a branch (i.e. ignore commits newer than the present commit)

More information about branching is covered in on the Branching page.

Commit menu

GitGuiCommitMenu.png

This menu contains options for committing code into the repository. However, the most important of these are:

  1. Sign off: Allows you to add your signature to the commit message (which you type in the lower right-hand window).
  2. Commit: Commits the staged files (in the lower-left hand window) into the repository.

Also note that both Sign Off and Commit have buttons at the front of the GUI (which you will probably use more often).

Merge menu

GitGuiMergeMenu.png

The most important command is:

  1. Local merge: This will pop open a dialog box and ask you which branch in your local code folder that you would like to merge into the current branch.

Remote menu

GitGuiRemoteMenu.png

You typically will not use these commands, unless you have write-access to the remote repository.