GitHub for Professional Beginners: From First Repository to First Release

RE: GitHub for Professional Beginners: From First Repository to First Release

shabaz — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 17:59:39 GMT

Even if I don't have a proper strategy, and am just working on a small personal project, bits of the process can be followed minus the development branch. For example, I have a small project in my own repository, I know no-one else is working on it, and I only have a main branch. This would be the situation at the start of a lot of simple projects I imagine.

On the PC, I had done a git clone to obtain the repo contents, and directly made and tested some code changes which have essentially ended up implementing a new feature. How can I get those changes into the repository?

I decided to create a feature branch after the fact that I had already worked on the feature, and merge that into main. You'd never do this for a real project where you'd want the ability to test multiple features before putting them into main; for that, you'd need the development branch to test an entire combination of new features thoroughly before merging into main. But this is my small project, I'm the only coder and tester, and I only want to merge one feature that I have tested (both feature and integration, since there are no other features to be integrated), and I'm not creating releases (so far!).

I did this:

git switch -c feature-acmeas  # create and switch to a branch called feature-acmeas

git add .  # prepare/stage the files for commit

git commit -m "Add AC measurement functionality"

git push -u origin feature-acmeas  # publish your feature branch to the remote (origin)

Then, I went to the GitHub repo web page, and clicked on Pull request, and created that as described in the blog post, requesting a merge into main, from the feature branch. I clicked through to perform the merge.

Finally, to delete the feature branch:

git checkout main  # get away from the branch that is to be deleted

git pull  # update the view with the latest from the origin

git branch -d feature-acmeas  # delete the local feature branch

git push origin --delete feature-acmeas  # delete the branch at the origin

All done!

RE: GitHub for Professional Beginners: From First Repository to First Release

balajivan1995 — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 16:47:17 GMT

Nice write up. But something seem to be missing and it took me a while to realise the part where git asks for password to push local commits to remote branch is missing.

RE: GitHub for Professional Beginners: From First Repository to First Release

DAB — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 19:58:56 GMT

Very good post.

RE: GitHub for Professional Beginners: From First Repository to First Release

shabaz — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 17:11:59 GMT

Just added the following diagram to help follow things.

I hope it's correct, but if anyone spots any error, please let me know!

RE: GitHub for Professional Beginners: From First Repository to First Release

genebren — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 15:35:49 GMT

Thanks for the great explanation! I have used Git in the past, but I am still rusty on all the ins and outs of the process, so this was a great review. Having started my software development on Unix environments, I have had a lot of experience using CVS. I have also used SVN (tortoise) on PCs, but I was never very impressed with that environment. I can see a lot of value in starting to use Git for my internal software development, so I have bookmarked this post to refer back to it when I am ready use it. Thanks for sharing this with the community!

RE: GitHub for Professional Beginners: From First Repository to First Release

kmikemoo — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 02:31:31 GMT

Great information! I may never get to this level, but it's noce to know that this guide is here if/when I need it. Thanks!

RE: GitHub for Professional Beginners: From First Repository to First Release

manojroy123 — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 17:03:53 GMT

Very Interesting. I was looking for such Beginners guide t GitHub.