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.

git init my-project

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

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.

ls --all

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

.
..
.git

Our first git command

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

git status

You’ll see this message:

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.

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.