Git SourceTree

Sourcetree tutorial with Git and Bitbucket

Git isn’t hard to learn.

What is Sourcetree? Sourcetree is a popular and extensive Git GUI tool，Sourcetree provides an intuitive, point-and-click GUI-based experience that takes the guesswork out of version control and simplifies integration with server-side Git tools such as Bitbucket, GitHub and GitLab.

How do you learn Git with Sourcetree?

You can quickly master Git, Bitbucket and Sourcetree with a five-pronged approach to learning:

1. Install Sourcetree and register for a Bitbucket account.
2. Practice collaborative back-and-forth operations with Github.
3. Master Sourcetree’s local Git history management features.
4. Learn to create Git branches and merge code with Sourcetree.
5. Familiarize yourself with advanced features including the squash and rebase commands.

Once you have cloned the repository, Sourcetree enables you to perform several key functions such as:

• Locally add files to your Git repo.
• Stage files to the Git index.
• Perform commits.
• Push code changes to the server.
• Get updates with fetch and pull commands.

A developer must become familiar with several basic Git commands — push, pull, fetch and clone commands — to master collaborative computing with Git and Sourcetree.

Then, the next task is to practice manipulating the Git commit history.

The ability to pull and fetch from Bitbucket is a key part of any Sourcetree tutorial.

Core Git commands with Sourcetree

Advanced Git users understand that all important Git operations happen locally, not on a remote GitHub  server.This is why developers must learn how to work with Git locally and get comfortable with commit history manipulation operations, such as the following:

• Git reverts.
• Amending git commits.
• Hard Git resets.
• Soft Git resets.
• Git tagging.

In a command prompt, it can be intimidating learning all of the Git commands, switches and required parameters to perform all of these Git history manipulation tasks.In Sourcetree? These operations are simply achieved with right-clicks, checkboxes and intuitive menu options.

checkboxes and intuitive menu options.

The ability to perform a soft or hard Git reset with Sourcetree is a common task that developers must learn.

Git branching in Sourcetree

Git’s biggest gift to the software development community is that it enables developers to perform isolated development inside branches.

With branching in Sourcetree, developers create their own code-spaces where they can safely take chances, break things and hopefully create some brilliant software, all without the risk of breaking the build.

In terms of branching with Sourcetree, developers should become comfortable with the following tasks:

• Creating branches.
• Merging branches.
• Resolving merge conflicts.
• Deleting branches.
• Using Sourcetree-Gitflow integration.

Mastery of Git branching is essential for any team doing modern software development.

Finally, once a developer masters branching, collaborative Git operations and commit history management with Sourcetree and Github， it’s time to tackle some advanced features, such as the following:

• Sourcetree rebasing of branch histories.
• Performing Bitbucket pull requests with Sourcetree.
• Connecting to alternate repos like Git, GitLab and AWS CodeCommit.

Many developers are afraid to rebase branches and squash commits. Sourcetree makes these tasks easy to perform.