GIT Terminologies

We can also say DVCS Terminologies

Local Repository
Every VCS tool provides a private workplace as a working copy. Developers make changes in their private workplace and after commit, these changes become a part of the repository. Git takes it one step further by providing them a private copy of the whole repository. Users can perform many operations with this repository such as add file, remove file, rename file, move file, commit changes, and many more.

Working Directory and Staging Area or Index
The working directory is the place where files are checked out. In other CVCS, developers generally make modifications and commit their changes directly to the repository. But Git uses a different strategy. Git doesn’t track each and every modified file. Whenever you do commit an operation, Git looks for the files present in the staging area. Only those files present in the staging area are considered for commit and not all the modified files.

Let us see the basic workflow of Git.

Step 1 − We modify a file from the working directory.

Step 2 − We add these files to the staging area.

Step 3 − We perform commit operation that moves the files from the staging area. After push operation, it stores the changes permanently to the Git repository.

Git steps

Suppose you modified two files, namely “hello.java” and “service.java” and you want two different commits for each operation. You can add one file in the staging area and do commit. After the first commit, repeat the same procedure for another file.

First Commit

$ git add hello.java

adds file to the staging area

$ git commit –m “Added hello file ”

Second commit

$ git add service.java

adds file to the staging area

$ git commit –m “Added service file ”

Blobs

Blob stands for Binary Large Object. Each version of a file is represented by blob. A blob holds the file data but doesn’t contain any metadata about the file. It is a binary file, and in Git database, it is named as SHA1 hash of that file. In Git, files are not addressed by names. Everything is content-addressed.

Commits

Commit holds the current state of the repository. A commit is also named by SHA1 hash. You can consider a commit object as a node of the linked list. Every commit object has a pointer to the parent commit object. From a given commit, you can traverse back by looking at the parent pointer to view the history of the commit. If a commit has multiple parent commits, then that particular commit has been created by merging two branches.

Trees

Tree is an object, which represents a directory. It holds blobs as well as other sub-directories. A tree is a binary file that stores references to blobs and trees which are also named as SHA1 hash of the tree object.

Branches

Branches are used to create another line of development. By default, Git has a master branch, which is same as trunk in Subversion. Usually, a branch is created to work on a new feature. Once the feature is completed, it is merged back with the master branch and we delete the branch. Every branch is referenced by HEAD, which points to the latest commit in the branch. Whenever you make a commit, HEAD is updated with the latest commit.

Tags

Tag assigns a meaningful name with a specific version in the repository. Tags are very similar to branches, but the difference is that tags are immutable. It means, tag is a branch, which nobody intends to modify. Once a tag is created for a particular commit, even if you create a new commit, it will not be updated. Usually, developers create tags for product releases.

Clone

Clone operation creates the instance of the repository. Clone operation not only checks out the working copy, but it also mirrors the complete repository. Users can perform many operations with this local repository. The only time networking gets involved is when the repository instances are being synchronized.

Pull

Pull operation copies the changes from a remote repository instance to a local one. The pull operation is used for synchronization between two repository instances. This is same as the update operation in Subversion.

Push

Push operation copies changes from a local repository instance to a remote one. This is used to store the changes permanently into the Git repository. This is same as the commit operation in Subversion.

HEAD

HEAD is a pointer, which always points to the latest commit in the branch. Whenever you make a commit, HEAD is updated with the latest commit. The heads of the branches are stored in .git/refs/heads/ directory.

Revision

Revision represents the version of the source code. Revisions in Git are represented by commits. These commits are identified by SHA1 secure hashes.

URL

URL represents the location of the Git repository. Git URL is stored in config file.