Git

Git is a version control system, like Mercurial with slightly more confusing commands, or like Subversion on steroids. It's a distributed VCS (DVCS), which you can google to find out more about, but if you've only ever used subversion and CVS, you'll find it a little different (hopefully more pleasant) to work with then you're used to.

At some stage, someone might put up a full tutorial showing how to use git, but for now, here's how to get and use a repository on redbrick's git hosting area.

Getting a git repository on Redbrick

Before you can use redbrick's git repositories from one of your computers (or from your redbrick shell), you need to create a public/private SSH keypair there if you haven't already. You'll need to do this for every device/place that you want to access git from. This might sound annoying, but it also lets you use git without having to type a password every time you need to clone/push/pull.

To do this on a Unixey (Linux/Mac OS X/on redbrick) system, run:

 ssh-keygen -t rsa

[you@your-computer ~]$ ssh-keygen -t rsa
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/Users/you/.ssh/id_rsa): 
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): 
Enter same passphrase again: 
Your identification has been saved in /Users/you/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /Users/you/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
58:06:86:0c:83:5e:4e:ab:75:93:96:37:76:42:73:07 you@your-computer.local
The key's randomart image is:
+--[ RSA 2048]----+
| .oo .o  E.      |
|.  +o. + . .     |
|. + . + = .      |
| . + * O .       |
|  o o = S        |
| .               |
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
+-----------------+
[you@your-computer ~]$