Simple Command Line Operations and Git Usage

Starting in the 2019 season, there’s been a stronger need to use the command line than in previous years. Command-line interfaces are used often in real-world engineering and software development, so learning them is very useful.

Opening CMD and navigating to a directory in Windows

(Note that the first few steps are different on macOS/Linux—please search for instructions specific to your OS. On Linux/Unix, you are looking for a Bash/shell window; on macOS, you are looking for Terminal.)

Press the Start button (or the Windows key on your keyboard), type cmd, and open Command Prompt. This opens Command Prompt (cmd) scoped to your user home directory (typically C:/Users/username/).

You’ll need to navigate around to do anything useful. To list the contents of your current directory, type dir (ls on macOS/Linux). To navigate to another directory, use the change directory command (cd) like cd directory. With this command, .. references the directory above your current location, and . references the current directory. You can also use a full path, such as cd C:/Users/username/git/, to navigate directly.

Simple Git operations in Command Prompt

git status shows the files that differ from what has been committed.
git restore filename discards changes to the specified file in your working directory and replaces it with the last-committed version from the local repository.
git add -A stages all currently changed files in your working directory.
git commit -m "message" commits all currently staged changes with the provided message.
git push pushes commits from your local repository to the remote repository (you may need to run git push origin branchname the first time you push a new branch).
git branch shows the branches that currently exist for the repository.
git branch -c master branchname creates a new topic branch off of the master branch, and git checkout -b branchname creates a new topic branch off of the current branch.
git pull updates your local repository with changes that have been pushed to the remote repository.
git checkout branchname switches your working directory to a different branch.
git clone https://github.com/irs1318dev/Fauxbot.git clones the repository tracked at the provided URL, creating a local copy.

For more information about Git in the command prompt, see: