Git and Shell Challenge

Introduction

This repository provides the basic data for a challenge that is designed to sharpen your skills with Git and with the unix command shell. The first phase of the challenge focuses on Git and later steps focus on shell commands and tools.

At each stage, you will extra from the repository the information you need to find the next steps in the hunt. In most cases, this corresponds to finding or constructing a password-protected PDF file NEXTSTEP.pdf and the password needed to open that file. From time to time, the information needed for the next step is available by other means.

The first stage of the challenge uses git commands and a few unix commands that are built-in on Mac OS X, Linux, and Git Bash for Windows. The second stage sticks mostly to the same commands, but has some optional parts that use some others as well.

Errata

So far so good! We’ll keep you posted if any come up.

First Step

Clone the repository https://github.com/36-750/git-challenge-1 onto your local machine with the git clone command. Move into the git-challenge directory Check the status of the repository with the git status command, and confirm that you are in the master branch.

Now find the file NEXTSTEP.pdf in the top level directory of the repository. You will need to find a password to open that file. Various resources for this stage are listed below to help you with these actions; each PDF file along the way will have similar resources and links. (URLs in the PDF documents are all clickable links.)

Background

The git status and git log commands are useful for inspecting the state of the repository and its history. You can display the log in a variety of ways, viewing various data about each commit, including its unique hash and commit message. Here we will use the git log command to construct a password for the PDF file. Perform the tasks described below.

Tasks

1. Display a log of the most recent 12 commits, with each commit on one line and abbreviated commit hashes displayed. (Hint: use the git log command.)
2. In the displayed log, two consecutive commits have questions in the first line of their commit messages. Record the abbreviated commit hash (seven characters) for the older of these two commits.
3. Search the entire commit log (again with git log) for a commit whose message contains an equation of the form X=<word>. Record that word. (Hint: there are options to the git log that help perform that search.)
4. Concatenate the two recorded strings into a single string (for instance “abcgxyz” and “uvw8” would be joined into “abcgxyzuvw8”). This is the password for the PDF file.

Resources

• Inspecting Logs and Status: https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/inspecting-a-repository
• https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Basics-Viewing-the-Commit-History
• git log documentation at https://git-scm.com/docs/git-log or type git help log at the shell command prompt