🤗 A Friendly Intro to Working with Your Bitbucket via SSH on Windows

In 3 steps + some introduction + how to use git

What is SSH?

Wikpedia says:

Secure Shell (SSH) is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network

• It's a fancy way of saying that you can safely send your data from one place to another.

• In our case you'll send the data (your code) from your machine to your repository or vice versa :)

Why to even bother? 🤔

• SSH lets you synchronize your local code with your repository in a convenient and quick way.

• You won't need to drag and drop files, click confirmations and do other tedious stuff anymore.

1. Install Git Bash 💾

Git Bash is a command line tool. Basically, a window, where you can put your commands.

• To instal git click here

• Tell the installator that you want to add git to the context menu - it will give you very convenient options later!

2. Generate your SSH key 🔑

You can think about SSH key as your identifier - it lets Bitbucket (or GitHub or any other software that uses SSH) identify you.

To generate your first ever SSH key you need to follow these two simple sub-steps:

• Open your new friend - Git Bash

  • In any folder (might even be your desktop) click your right mouse button
  • Select Git Bash Here

• Go to this link

  • Find Set up SSH for Git on Windows

  • Follow the steps there (you can ommit Step 2 if you feel so)

🎉 **Congrats!** You just generated your first SSH key! 

3. Clone your repository 🐑🐑

• Go to your Bitbucket (or GitHub or so...) repository and click Clone

• Choose SSH option in clone window

• Copy the content of sub-window

• Paste it into Git Bash

  HARD PART ALERT :): in Git Bash use you don't use Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V instead use:

  • Insert to paste (and copy) (I know, I know, it's crazy, but this is how it works 🤔)

  NOTE: check if what you just copied starts with words git clone. If yes just press Enter. If no add git clone in front of what you just copied and press Enter.

  You should see something similar to the output below on your screen:

  Cloning into 'YOUR_REPOSITORY'...
  remote: Enumerating objects: 4, done.
  remote: Counting objects: 100% (4/4), done.
  remote: Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
  remote: Total 4 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
  Receiving objects: 100% (4/4), done.

  To get to your repository:

  $ ls
  YOUR_REPOSITORY/
  
  $ cd YOUR_REPOSITORY
  

  And now you can start using git! 😊

🎉 **Well done!** You rock!

4. Using git ⚽

There are five basic git commands:

• git status - you check the status of your local repo

• git add . - you prepare all your changes (here . means all) to being commited

• git commit -m "<some nice descriptive message here>" - you commit your changes and describe what your changes are

• git push - you send your files to the repository (here is where all that SSH hustle pays off! 😊)

• git pull - you download the latest version of the code from the repository

To get more familiar with these commands you may want to watch this nice video: https://youtu.be/eL_0Ok_Gkas?t=175

🎉 Congrats!!!

You just learned how to work with bitbucket with SSH. How cool is that? 😃

If you want to learn more about version control in general you may like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKg7e37bQE&t=698s