My project to write a replacement for Quicken was getting to the point where I decided I needed some version control of my software. I have used many flavors of this kind of software during my career. I think the first was DEC’s C(ode) M(anagement) S(ystem) – CMS. I have also used SCCS, RCS, CVS, and Cleartool. Rather than just use one of the tools I have used before, I decided to look into what is current. I have heard a lot about GIT. I decided to give it a try.

There is a book out, Pro Git book, written by Scott Chacon and Ben Straub and published by Apress. This should give you more idea of what GIT is, if you don’t already know.

I had GIT up and running very quickly, but there were a few operations that I was used to that I could not figure out how to do. All of the documentation that I could find on the web assumed you understood a key concept that I wasn’t getting. It finally dawned on me what the issue was, so I drew a picture to clarify the idea. If you are a GIT beginner, you might find it helpful.

My issue was that I had two cloned repositories and I wanted to update one from the work in the other. At the time, I had not created a hub, and didn’t know why I would need one. Now I see that the clone repositories aren’t really meant to talk to each other. Their common means of communication is only through the hub. It is possible to set up a local hub. It only took me 39 different commands to do it. Only the last 4 of those commands were necessary.