Create a Git Repository

A repository is just a directory with a .git folder in it.
Ok, it’s slightly complicated than that, but not much.

Use the init command to create a new git repository and directory.

Initialize and open new git repository
git init my-project

cd into the new project directory and run run ls to see it’s contents.

Open our repository and see what's in it
cd my-project
ls

It’s empty, right? Just what we’d expect from a new project. Run ls again but this time with the --all option.

List hidden files in /my-project
ls --all

Now we can see the hidden .git directory that makes my-project a git repository.

ls --all (output)
.
..
.git

Our first git command

Run git status to see the repository status. This is the most frequently used git command.

Check the repository status
git status

You’ll see this message:

git status (output)
On branch main


No commits yet


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

This one command introduces a lot of language for us to cover:

  • We’re on branch main.
  • Which has no commits.
  • And no files to add and track.

But before we do, let’s do a quick git magic trick…

Assignment #1

A git repository is any old project directory with a properly initialized .git directory inside of it.

Remove the .git directory and and run git status again. Do you see the same message or get an error?

Assignment #2

Existing project directories can be made into git repositories by running git init in their project root.

Initialize an existing project
cd my-existing-project
git init

Try this in an existing folder and run git status. What do you see?

And don’t forget, just remove the .git directory makes it a normal directory again.