Getting a Git Repository

Local repository

A local repository is a repository (basically a folder) located in your hard drive. It is local as opposed to the remote repository which is hosted on Github, Bitbucket or other remote version control repository host.

To initialise a local repository, just change (cd) into the directory which you would like to be a repository and enter git init. This just marks the current directory as a repository.

NB: You only need to initialise a repository once.

Remote repository

A remote repository is hosted online. The most popular remote git repository host include Github, Bitbucket and Gitlab. Before initialising a repository, one has to create an account on one of these hosts afterwhich you just create a repository.

If you do not have a local copy of the repository, you might want to initialise the remote repository with a README and a LICENSE.

Henceforth, the basic procedure is:

git add <filename(s)>

git commit [-m][message]

git push [options]