Using git in your Bela workflow
In the Project Explorer tab there is a section entitled Git Manager where you can initialise a Git repo. This is very useful for tracking files, particularly when you're developing very complex projects.
Though learning how to use Git is well documented elsewhere, this page provides an intro to why Git is useful in creating bela proejcts, and how to use it effectively.
What is Git?
Git is a software that keeps track of your files through the process of development.
Git has proved to be an important tool in the open source community, and for big projects that have lots of contributors. It's also very useful for smaller projects that only you work on.
This page won't teach you how to use all of Git - that's documented very well elsewhere. What this page will do is show you how to use Git to manage your Bela project files.
A note about Github
Github is a well-known website where people store projects managed with Git. Git and Github are not the same thing! Git is free, open-source software. Github is a website where people can store projects that they use Git to track.
At this time the Bela IDE doesn't integrate with Github directly.
Why use Git?
When you type in the IDE, your code is automatically saved on your board. This is a huge advantage because it means you don't have to worry about losing unsaved work.
However, this also means that you're constantly overwriting your old code. For smaller projects this doesn't tend ot be an issue, but for bigger and more complex projects it can pose difficulties, because you may have tried somethingout that didn't work, and you've overwritten your old code and can't return to it.
This is where Git comes in. You can use Git to remember your code at a specific point in time. This means that you can return to that code later on after the project has changed completely.