Using Git on this course¶

Personal Git repository¶

For each student registered in the course, we will create a personal Git central repository during the first week. When your repository has been created, you will receive an automatic message to you student email about it.

After receiving this message, you are able to see the content of your repository with a web browser, using the web address (URL):

https://course-gitlab.tuni.fi/compcs110-fall2026-p1/###.git

where ### shall be replaced with your intranet username.

When Git or a web browser asks your username and password, you should write your own intranet username and password. Note that username is not the same as email address. You should know your username at least based on the automated email that you should receive after your repository has been created.

Web user interface is meant for exploring the content of the repository. Although it provides tools, for instance, for changing settings, do not make any modifications in the repository through the web interface. Namely, if you do not exactly know what you are doing, some properties, critical from the point of view of the course, may stop working. Especially, avoid Settings selection at bottom left. Instead you can find interesting information at Files, Commits, Network, and Graphs. The more you use version control, the more you can understand the information.

You will need the aforementioned URL also when cloning your repository (see next subsection) and when submitting your program code on Plussa.

Before submitting the first assignment¶

This section considers necessary initial actions when using Git in command line (Terminal). Instead, if you use Git from Qt, you can read initial actions from the section Option: Using Git from Qt Creator at Initial actions.

Initial actions in command line¶

To say it shortly, here we will clone the Git repository that can be found in the web link mentioned in the previous subsection just above. If you cannot use the command line yet, you can get familiar with it by reading from the end part of the material Command line operations.

From a certain url, you can clone the repository to a given path as follows:

git clone <url> <path>

In cloning you can give a path, also different from the default one. In this way, you can follow your own naming convention. If you give no path, then the directory will be created in your working directory. By default the name of the directory to be created will be the same as the repository to be cloned.

You can copy the URL needed in the command from the repository’s web user interface (on the right) by pressing the button “Code”, which opens the menu:

If you have set your SSH key in GitLab (see material concerning it) you should use SSH URL, otherwise use HTTPS URL.

If you cloned your repository in the subdirectory called prog2 under your home directory, you will find the repository from the path:

/home/username/prog2/username

where the word username is replaced by your own intranet username. If you cloned your repository in your home directory, you will find it from the path:

/home/username/username

In both cases, the directory username occurs twice in the path, but this should not cause problems. Git commands should work only in the lower level username directory. (If they are working also in the upper level username directory, you should contact course personnel, e.g. by sending e-mail to the course e-mail address, prog2@tuni.fi.)

Final notes¶

A Git project may include any type of files. In this course, your Git repository includes three subdirectories, each of which includes subdirectories that are projects of Qt Creator. Qt Creator assumes that a project is a directory including a .pro file C++ source code files. In large software projects, a single Git repository typically includes a single Qt project, and thus, Qt Creator expects that the cloned Git repository would include a .pro file, based of which Qt Creator could automatically open the project. The error message was due to the different structure of the repository used in this course. However, we could still clone the repository.