Git File Lifecycle

In this post, we will explore, experiment and see git basic files and folder-related commands if you are familiar with the Linux file system this will be easy for you! But, again no need to worry about that we will see every command execution with experiments.

Every software product/server Lifecycle can be visible with their STATUS output, where they are currently if you know then you can move to different Lifecycle state. Let's understand how this navigation happens on the Git repository.

Git File lifecycle status changes with commands

Git Status

Git Status will always compare the files and folders with the indexed with untracked files and display their status. 

Syntax:

git status [options]

This command will check the status of the current branch by comparing it with the master branch
Example:

git status -s 

This `git status` command will show the working tree status. and it is having multiple useful options.

When you use the -s or --short option it will display the concisely where status will be represented with single alphabet 

1. ' ' = unmodified
2. M = modified
3. A = added
4. D = deleted
5. R = renamed
6. C = copied
7. U = updated but unmerged

In the help page you can find more details about different format output meanings in three different tables.
 

Adding files and folders to the Stage area

We can add files from the work area to the stage area using the `git add` command. 

git add command

Here we can add TEXT files because all program codes will be ASCII text format only.

Syntax:

git add [file-name]

this files can be recently modified shell or python program using some editor.

Add a file to the staging/index area

Example:

 git status # shows nothing
 vi public/product.html # create a file and edit then save it.
 git status # observer it shows red color output.
 git add public/product.html
 git status # shows the changes in green     
   

Adding file to Git repository (local)

Adding entire folder 

You are working on a website project you need to add all the images files (.jpg) required for your website are need to place into a folder called 'images'.  To send from Untracked state files to tracked level or you can say this as work-copy to index area entire folder you can send by providing foldername as argument to git add command.

clear
cd source_code
mkdir images css publish
cd images
#copy some images to images directory here for learning used touch filename.jpg used
cd ..
git add images 

Git add entire folder example

When you observer the the staged files now the two image files will be in green colored that indicates that they are moved to index area of Git repo.

After adding folder status

Adding Current folder content

Similar to Unix/Linux  uses dot to indicate current folder content it may contain

Git add with current directly

Syntax:

git add -A

Adding all folders all files -A

add all new and changed files to the staging area

Git add All Folder

Example:

git add -A

Removing files and directories from repository

Now this can be in three use cases. 

Use case 1: let's see how to remove a file or directory from local repository and also from the filesystem

git rm testcode.file [code-dir] -f

Remove files from git repository

  git rm publish/product.html # Errors out
git rm -f publish/product.html 
git status 
cd publish; ls # file removed from the filesystem as well
  

Use case 2: removing a file or directory from local repo and not from filesystem

git rm testcode.file [code-dir] --cached

Use case 3: removing a file or directory display a trail run, not really deletes anything from the repository.

git rm testcode.file [code-dir] –dry-run

Check the list of files changed

There are lots of options to check this with git and subcommands Here we will see with ls-files option so that you can see the list of files or folders recently changed

 git ls-files 

List of files in single line space separated

 git ls-files –z 

This is another wonder option with -d , where Git will lists the files or folders which are last delated from the existing repository.

git ls-files -d

Renaming file using git mv

Similar to LInux mv command we can rename a file or folder using git mv command. Here we can have existing file or folder and renamed to new file name or folder. After this if we check the status in short it will shows 'R' that means Renamed.

git mv publish/index.html publish/sanjay.html
git status -s -b

Hope you enjoyed this post of learning love on GitOps!!! Yom be interested in the next git learning post on git branching.