GIT

GIT is a version control system which allows you to keep track of all your files, work in groups and has many tools / workflows to support you. One of the most important feature is that you always can switch back to old versions of your files. This is the reason why you should commit changes (commit is the process of marking files as changed and telling the system to remember the current state of the file) very frequently. There are many very good interactive and easy tutorials (e.g. GIT in 15 minutes), you really should have a quick look into them. Nevertheless, here are some information to give a quick overview:

You can find the address of your personal repository-server on CEWebS. There is also a quick introduction.

First steps

Step 1: Cloning the remote repository to your computer
simply go to the link above to find out your personal address and type the following command:

git clone http://a1234567@donatello.wst.univie.ac.at/repositories/227/Data/ assignment1a

The green part is your link and the blue part is the current project you are working on (indeed it is called a branch, but that's something you can look up for yourself). :)
GIT is now asking you for your password (it's your u:net password), after typing it in you should get some status information as well as a new directory (in this case it will be named assignment1a). Switch into this directory and you're ready for the next step.

Step 2: Doing changes
Okay, now create a text file and write something into it. In order to commit your change you have to do this:

git add *
git commit -m "My first commit"

The first command tells git to add all files to your next commit and the second one finally saves the current state of all added files. The part after -m is your commit message. You can explain what you did / changed in a few words.
Open your new text file and edit it (e.g. change a word). To commit the new state simply repeat both of the commands above.

Step 3: Synchronizing with the server
Well, on your local machine all the changes are stored but now it's time to push all these changes to the remote server. That's pretty simple, too:

git push

This will upload all commits to the remote repository (the server on univie.ac.at in our case). We're only able to grade your submission if you push all your commits to the remote repository! Make sure that everything was uploaded successfully by e.g. checking the CEWebS page!