Isn't the whole purpose of GIT Version Control? In other words to prevent work loss occurring from mergers and/or updates? Maybe I'm confusing GitHub with GIT?
PS I want to set up a server for a couple of domain names I recently acquired, it has been many years so I'm not exactly sure if this is even practical anymore. Way back when I used to distribution based off of CENT OS called SME server, is it still common place to use a all in one distribution like that? Or is it better to just install my preferred flavour of Linux and each package separately?
The two primary source code management activities developers use are versioning of source code (tracking changes which happened over time) and the other being synchronisation of code with other developers.
One of Git’s differentiating strengths is it being decentralised, allowing you to do many operations in isolation locally without a central server being involved. You can then synchronise your local repository with an arbitrary number of other copies of it which may be remote, but you may need to rebase or merge in order to integrate your changes with those of other developers.
Git is more like a local database (it even allows multiple local checkouts against a single common “database”) and it only occasionally “deletes” old “garbage”. Anything you do locally in Git is atomic and can always be rolled back (provided garbage collection hasn’t yet been performed).
Although I’m comfortable enough with using the reflog to rollback changes (I’m also skilled enough in git I haven’t needed to in many years), it’s not very user friendly, it’s essentially like sifting through trash, you’ll eventually be able to find what you lost (provided it wasn’t lost too long ago), but you may have to dig around a bit. Hence my suggestion of tagging first, makes it easy to find it again if needed.
I have very limited Linux experience and have no recommendations on your other question.
Thank you for the well detailed response to my question. I'm currently working on returning to the CS Field due to a devastating and career ending injury. The specific Field I'm interested in his programming the interface between hardware such as robotics and user interfaces. So much has changed over the past decade I feel like I'm having to start all over and relearn everything to do with programming! And on top of that I have to also relearn how to live as a quadriplegic! Thank goodness for the Internet and it's incredible amount of free knowledge available these days!
- Commit any pending changes.
- Make a git tag at your current head (any name is fine, even gibberish).
If anything “goes wrong” you can rollback by simply doing reset hard to the tagged commit.
Once done, delete the tag.
Making a complete “backup clone” is a complete waste of time and disk space.