Help getting started with GitHub

Development Help
#1

Hello there,

I’ve already gotten the Godot and Visual Studio stuff set-up and know how to clone from GitHub branches (for the Git LFS functionality), but I am unsure about the other functions of operating the Git CMD. I have some questions:

  1. Is it possible to clone from a specific tag? I see the tags section next to branches, but don’t know how to specifically download a tagged variant (I know how to download branches already). Or should I just download the master branch and work on it from there?
  2. If the master branch path is what I have to do, how would I update the files with recent pull-release additions to the main repository? It is quite a rudimentary task to fork the repository on GitHub, but I was unable to figure out how to update an older repository with new additions. Does it automatically update?
  3. How do I send changes to a repository using Git CMD? I know I could take time to look through the GitHub documentation to find out, but I am hoping to avoid the headache of sifting through it.

Any answers to these questions would be appreciated.

#2

If you aren’t familiar with Git, you might want to find a Git tutorial (there are some linked in the setup instructions), for example a full on online book: Git - Book

You probably can’t clone a specific tag. But clone is (usually) a full history of the repository. So after cloning you can checkout any tag to move to that specific version in history.

This is actually a pretty complicated thing, depending on the exact circumstances, which you don’t mention. It can be as easy as:

git checkout master
git pull
git checkout my_branch
git merge master
git push

to update a branch from the master. However, if you have a fork, you need to have a separate remote either for pushing or for pulling, see: GitHub Standard Fork & Pull Request Workflow · GitHub (also linked in the setup instructions) Especially check the " Keeping Your Fork Up to Date" section.

If you have push remote and remote tracking branch set correctly it is just:

git push

However depending on what you have done to get a local branch, you may need to specify the remote branch and the remote you are pushing to, for it to work.

If you aren’t familiar with the core git concepts, things are going to be pretty confusing. It takes some time to learn to use Git, but it’s a very useful skill especially if you want to become a software engineer, tester, or anything like. If you want to work with source code, you’ll likely need to learn Git at some point.

1 Like