🚩 Checkpoint 1: Make Your Repo

Time to do it for real. You have learned init, status, add, commit, and log — now you will use all of them to start the project you build throughout this course: a small data-analyst portfolio repo called my-data-portfolio.

By the end of this checkpoint you will have a real Git repository on your machine with two commits in its history.

Before you start

Finish Initialize a Repo and Stage and Commit first. You also need Git installed with your name and email configured (from Setup). If git --version prints a version number, you are ready.

Step 1 — Create the project folder

mkdir my-data-portfolio
cd my-data-portfolio

Use this exact name. You will type it many times across the course, and Checkpoint 2 expects it.

Step 2 — Initialize the repo

git init

You should see Initialized empty Git repository in .../dataready-git-repo/.git/.

Step 3 — Create a README

Your portfolio needs a front page. Create it from the terminal:

echo "# My Data Portfolio" > README.md
echo "" >> README.md
echo "My hands-on project from the DataReady Git course." >> README.md

Check what Git sees:

git status

README.md shows up under Untracked files.

Step 4 — Make your first commit

git add README.md
git commit -m "Add project README"

Step 5 — Add a description and commit again

echo "" >> README.md
echo "## Contents" >> README.md
echo "- SQL queries I have written" >> README.md
echo "- Notes on what I learned" >> README.md
git add README.md
git commit -m "Describe repo contents in README"

What you should see

git log --oneline

Two commits, newest on top:

b2c3d4e Describe repo contents in README
a1b2c3d Add project README

If something goes wrong

Error	What it means	Fix
git: command not found	Git is not installed	Revisit Setup
Author identity unknown	Name/email not configured	git config --global user.name "..." and user.email "..."
nothing to commit after git add	You did not actually change the file	Re-run the echo line, then git status

Mistakes are the point

If you commit the wrong thing, do not worry. Later checkpoints teach you how to fix and undo commits. For now, getting commits at all is the win.

✅ Checkpoint complete

• my-data-portfolio folder exists and git status runs inside it
• README.md is committed
• git log --oneline shows two commits

Your repo lives only on your machine right now. In the next checkpoint you put it on GitHub and see it online.