In your terminal, navigate to the directory you want to
track.
For now, create an empty directory (or “folder”) with the
mkdir command:
mkdir my-new-git-repo
Once you’ve made your directory, move into it via command
line with the cd command:
cd my-new-git-repo
If you want to make sure it worked, you can enter pwd. It should return the path to your new directory ( /Users/[yourname]/my-new-git-repo ).
Initialize git in your directory by entering:
git init
You should see something like “Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/[yourname]/my-new-git-repo/.git/”
Make a new file to track with git. Use cat to create a text file called hello.txt: cat > hello.txt
The terminal should bring you to an empty line. Type in
Hello, world! (or whatever you'd like to save in a
text file) and then press
Ctrl + D to save.
If you enter
cat hello.txt (no
> this time), your terminal will show you the
contents of your text file. You should see the text you
just typed.
Let's check on git now. You can do this by entering:
git status
You should see a message that includes this:
Let’s do exactly that. Add your new file to be tracked by Git:
git add hello.txt
If you enter git status now, you’ll get a similar message, but hello.txt will be in green and under the heading “Changes to be committed:”
A commit is a message Git will store that describes the changes you’re making and asking Git to track. It can be as detailed or basic as you want.
To commit your changes, use >git commit, add a -m, then enclose your message in quotes:
git commit -m "created hello.txt, a text file containing Hello, World!"
It’s also common for your first commit in a new repository to be “first commit,” like so:
git commit -m "first commit"