This is a step-by-step checklist that can be used by a new person to know exactly what commands they need to type to use Git during a normal coding session. Follow this to start on some new work using your teammates’ most recent code as your starting point.

Central Branching Model

Each team member works only on their own branches, and then merge their changes into a single central branch via pull requests.

<aside> <img src="/icons/exclamation-mark_gray.svg" alt="/icons/exclamation-mark_gray.svg" width="40px" /> 2 people never edit the same branch

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Practical Checklist

1. Are you in your project folder?

Yes (e.g. C:\\Users\\Documents\\react-links-app) → go to 2.

No (e.g. C:\\Users\\Documents>) → use cd path\\react-links-app until your command line shows you are in the main project folder.

2. Always start by making sure you know about the latest changes: git fetch --all

3. Make sure you’re starting from a clean slate on your local repository: Type git status

Do you have any modified files?

• Yes → (command line output will have files under Changes not staged for commit:)
• No → (command line output will say nothing to commit, working tree clean)

4. Double check your work → git status should return the result “On branch dev”, and “nothing to commit, working tree clean”. If not, try the above steps again.

5. Add the latest changes from the GitHub repository into the copy of the dev branch on your computer.

• Single-repo workflow: git pull origin dev

6. Get ready to do your work: make a new branch starting from the most recent copy.

• Type git branch my-branch-name
• Type git checkout my-branch-name

7. Double check your work → git status should reveal On branch my-branch-name and nothing to commit, working tree clean. You’re ready to start working!

8. ▬▬ Do some coding ▬▬

9. Save your work →

• Double check → git status should reveal On branch my-branch-name and a list of all the files you’ve edited.
• git add -A or git add .
• git commit -m "descriptive text that tells what changes I made to the code"
  • If you forget the commit message and get stuck in VIM editor here’s how to get out
• git push -u origin my-branch-name (read about -u)

10. Check **Pull Request Checklist** before submitting a new pull request.

11. Go to the repository’s pull requests tab. Make a new pull request to add your changes to the central branch dev.