A crash course in Git

Clone a repo

Let's take hostmaster:

git clone http://git.drupalcode.org/project/hostmaster.git

If successful, you will have a hostmaster directory at the last state of development ('HEAD' in CVS speak, usually 'master' branch in git speak, though in our case this is now 6.x-1.x).

Check the status of the local git repository:

git status

See the commit messages:

git log

Check all 'releases'

git tag

Create a new branch for your local development:

git checkout -b <new_branch_name>

Create a new branch for development, based on an existing remote branch or tag

git checkout -b <new_branch_name> origin/<branch_name>