GitHub Tutorial For Beginners 2026 | How To Use GitHub? | Getting Started With GitHub | Simplilearn

[music] Hello everyone and welcome to today's tutorial on how to use GitHub. Whether you are new to version control or want to enhance your GitHub skills, this tutorial will provide you with everything you need to get started. Now, let me tell you something about GitHub. GitHub is one of the most powerful platforms for developers which allows you to host and share your repositories, collaborate on projects, and showcase your work. So guys, if you are interested to know about all of these things, then watch this video till the end. And also guys, by the end of this tutorial, you'll have the skills to manage your projects on GitHub, contribute to open source software, and work seamlessly with teams on collaborative coding projects. So here's the agenda of our today's session. First, we are going to start with an introduction to Git and GitHub. Then we are going to install Git and set up our GitHub. After that, we going to create our first Git repository. Moving ahead, we are going to explore some of the most important git commands. And finally, we are going to push our first project on GitHub. Now, before we move ahead into the session, just a quick info guys. Simply learn has got DevOps engineers master program. You can becomes DevOps expert with hands-on projects and IBM AWS Azure's official content. You can master all stages of the DevOps life cycle. You can access to blended learning via live online classes with free interactive labs and also you can access official learning content from IBM and earn IBM certificate. Now here is a short quest to test your knowledge. What is the primary purpose of using GitHub in software development? And your options are to store and manage source code versions to create project documentation or to store large binary files or to design user interfaces. Please mention your answers in the comment section below. So let's get started. So guys let us first try to understand what is Git and after that we are going to explore how to use GitHub. G is actually a version control system. In simple terms if I have to say it is going to keep a track of every change you make to your code or the files. It lets you save versions and go back in time and compare changes and uh you can work safely without breaking things. Now if I talk about GitHub on the other hand, GitHub is a cloud platform that hosts Git repositories. Think of it as online space where developers store their Git manage projects, collaborate with others, review code and manage issues. In short, if I have to say Git is a tool that is going to track the changes and GitHub is a place where Git projects live and teams can collaborate. Now there is one very important discussion that we can have. Why we need this version control system? Imagine without version control system software development will become very chaotic. Here's how. So if you're using version control system, then there is no fear of breaking code. You can experiment with code freely. Uh let's say something goes wrong, you can also do roll back to the previous version. Let's say if multiple developers want to collaborate, they can uh create branches and work on the respective feature branches and work together. It is perfect for auditing and debugging and it keeps uh all the coding process very transparent and you have a very safe collaboration and [snorts] the most important part of this is you can review changes before merging them into main codebase. So guys if I have to say in modern software development process if someone is not using git then there is no serious development going on. Uh and let me give you one very good analogy related to that. Let's say I plan to write a book. Okay. And uh let's say along with me my friends are out also writing the respective book. Now every edit what I'm doing is it is getting recorded on Google Docs. I can undo the changes. I can compare previous versions, drafts. So you can imagine something like GitHub is just like your Google drive and also everyone can access the same project. Uh editors can review the chapters, changes could be approved before publishing. So that's how exactly Git works. Git works locally on your laptop while GitHub works online with the whole team. So I hope so guys you would have got a brief idea regarding the same. Now um let me say all over here if you need to get started with GitHub the first thing I would like to say is go to the official website of git and this is the official website only and you can install it all over here. Click on the installation button. So let's say if you are using Windows it's very much easier. So you need to just click here to download the latest version which is 2.53 and um just right click all over here and you can see the download will get started. Now in the next process all you have to do is just click on the respective terms and conditions and it is going to automatically install it. It is a very easy process and it has a very interactive GUI. Now if you talk about Mac Ox then uh you can install all over here. Let's say you can install through home brew if you're having. So just type brew install git all over here or you can try using Mac ports. So you can try pseudo port install git. Then you can also use xcode also all over here. So just select xcode uh select install. And uh if you like using the GUI or the graphical user interface, you can also install BU install git GUI. Now for Linux um first of all you need to type app get install get you have to add the respective repository all over here. Then you need to update and uh install the respective git. This is for Uber. Let's say if you are using Fedora then you have to install using yum. Yum is a package manager. yum install git or dnf install git. So for 21 version you can use this and for the version greater than 21 uh you can use dnf. Now if you're using gento uh you can use emerge hyphen ask - verbose dev vcs get you can also use arch linux to perform the same thing. So, Pac-Man as git. Uh, if you are using opens USC then zipper install get and similarly there are a couple of other distributions also you can look uh at this respective documentation but basically most of you will be using Ubuntu. So you can follow this. Now after you have installed the git go to your command prompt all over here and uh after that guys what you need to do is you need to check the version of your git. So how do you do it? All you need to type get- version and I'm using old version of the git which is 2.445.1. So you might get 2.52 or 53 based on the latest version. So this verifies that now you have git installed on your system. Now before we get used to it there are a couple of basic commands to get started and after that you can integrated with uh GitHub and to push your respective projects on the GitHub. I will also show you that how to do that but first let's get wellversed with some of the basic git commands. So guys uh based on the get commands you can find the respective catalog being built all over here. Let's say if you are working on the setup or configuration part then you can look for these respective commands. If you want to create uh the respective projects you can start all from here. Basic snapshooting you can all start from here. For branching and merging you can look out for these respective commands. for sharing and updating the projects. You can see there is fetch, pull, push, remote, subm module and for inspection and comparison, show log, diff tool, range, short log, describe. Now, uh we have one of our video on Git and GitHub full course where I have explained all these respective commands. So you can look that respective video. Now uh let's look at some of the very basic commands. So this is a official reference kind of a g uh cheat sheet which is very much better if you just want to recap the basic g command. So let's say if you want to initialize a new repo so the command is get in it. If you want to clone any existing repo then the command is get clone. If you want to add any respective file you can add get add file. If you want to uh add all the unttracked files uh and unstage changes get add dot. this will be doing it and let's say if you want to delete any file delete rm and then give the file name then uh you can give uh get rm and the respective file name and uh if you want to check the status you can look for get status now uh the one of the most important commands that is get commit let's say if you want to commit any uh message all over here you can use this now uh you can also switch between the branches so the command is get switch And you can check out also all over here. Then uh you can create the branch get switch c get checkout b and you can commit a message also all over here. So these are some of the very basic command guys. Now let's use this command to push any project. So let me look my local repository. So guys let's say I have this respective project which is e-commerce project. It's a full stack project and let's say I want to push it to my respective git. Let me open my GitHub first. So all over here go to your GitHub and uh just click on login. Log into your respective GitHub account and you can see I have already logged in. So just create a new repository. Let's check e-commerce full stack app. Okay, you can give a description also. Let's say this is a full stack e-commerce app built with NexJS. Okay. Now you can either choose this visibility to be public or private. I rather keep it public. And uh just click on create the repository. So now your repository will be created. Now when you create your repository there are certain things you need to do it. So here's a list of commands that you need to follow. So let us do the same thing. So first we need to initialize our respective repository. So just click on git in it and just click enter. It says initialize empty git repository in this respective file. Meaning that the dogget file has been created in the respective folder. Now uh let's move on to the next part. The next part says you can add the read md. Okay. So I don't want to do that since I already have all the quotes. So I'll just add get add dot to add all the respective unstaged files. And you can see it has started to add all these respective files. Now I have a very uh big level of files. So it it might take some time. Okay. Now this is completely done. Now let's commit our first message that uh this is the first commit. So I'll just type get commit m. M is a hyphen. means message and in the double quotation I'll say let's this be a first commit I'll click enter and u the commit will start to happen and you can say committed commits have been made all across these things now let me also add the next command let's create a main branch so let's go all over here and this will flag as this as the main branch the command is get branch m and then main. Now we have made our main branch. Now let's add a remote origin. So this is going to uh now create a remote origin to this respective link. Okay. So just do this and let's try to add it up. And finally we need to push this respective project. So just copy this and let's just push this respective project. So guys now you can it has started pushing up the respective project all over here and uh you can see it started compressing the objects. It has started writing the objects and it gives you a data that total 3,162 uh uh datas have been pushed up and it gives you certain flags like reuse zero packed reuse zero and um it is resolving all those objects which has uh it has shared all over to GitHub and uh git is like a bridge through which you can you know send your project to GitHub and GitHub is like a cloud platform form which is storing all your respective projects. Now if I look at all over here and I just refresh it, you can see that uh these are my respective project and you can see the commit message have been added. I've added the the respective things all over here. You can see I this also includes the read MD block. So whenever you are pushing up your project you can easily look up the commands which are present all over here on the GitHub. Sometimes you will definitely face issue. Let's say if your remote origin uh is not successfully established or let's say if your repository does not give the required permissions. So you need to look back into what configurations you are trying to give. So I hope so guys you would have got a brief idea regarding how to use GitHub and u that was all for today's tutorial guys. I hope so now you can efficiently use GitHub. Thank you guys for watching this video.