This is a tutorial for Git. We focus on the features necessary for homework submission.

What is Git?

It is a version control system.
A cloud storage that is specialized for developing and maintaining source codes.
Especially useful when developing the codes as a team.

For the homework submission…

You may use git as another Dropbox or Google Drive
which means you do everything in a traditional way and then just use git to upload the final version.
That is fine for the class.
Of course you can try using features of git.
For example, if you do the homework as a pair, you may use git to collaborate.

Create the remote (i.e. cloud) storage and clone it with the local storage in your computer.
Make changes in the local storage and then push the changes to the remote storage.
In other machines, pull any changes from the remote storage to update the local storage.

Then make further changes in the local storage, and then push the changes to the remote storage.

In Step 2 of the above, git requires to commit the changes before we push the changes to the remote storage.
commit is a procedure that records the history of the source code
Git records history of all the changes that are made for the source code, like below:

To update the remote storage, you first commit to record these changes and then push.
When you commit, you can add comments to describe the changes made.

When developing the code, we may want to try various revisions from the current version.
Git is able to track multiple lines of histories originating from one node, which we call branches.
It is useful when someone wants to develop the code differently from the mainstream branch, the master branch.
Branching also happens when multiple members try to update the same file at the same time.
Git assigns members to different branches to resolve the updating problem.
If the team wants to apply the changes in a branch into the master branch, they can merge the branch.
For simple tasks like writing the homework, you would simply use the master branch.

In principle, Git uses console commands.
That means we type something like the following to do the tasks described in the workflow:

git commit -m "first draft of HW1"
git push origin master

If you dislike this, you can use GUI applications that helps you to do these by clicking buttons.
I personally use Sourcetree, which is free, but of course you can use other applications.
As long as you understand the concept of commit, push, pull, etc., you would have no problem using these GUI applications.
To use git, you need accounts from Github or Bitbucket. Create an account.
Even with GUI applications, creating a remote storage may require you to specify things that you have no idea. In that case, go to the website of Github or Bitbucket and create a remote storage in the website.
Then you would have no problem cloning the remote storage into your computer using the GUI applications.
Once you clone the storage, you can now commit, push and pull the changes.