27 Nov 2021 series: git fundamentals

Welcome traveller. Pour yourself a cup of tea and join me as we explore the git source control tool from first principles.

This post is part of a series on Git Fundamentals:

What is git?

git is

a distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency. (from: https://git-scm.com)

git is a time machine for your terminal; it allows you to save snapshots of your code as you work and then travel backwards and forwards in time.

git is a magic wand; it allows you to rewrite history.

git is both very complicated and very simple.

This series will attempt to demystify git and provide a practical foundation for using it confidently and effectively.

Who is this series for?

Many people learn git by example and learn just enough to contribute to open-source or internal projects but never really understand how git works.

This series is for anyone who:

finds git intimidating;
finds yourself confused while working with git tools;
learned git by using it but wants to understand more about how it works;

Our roadmap

We will start with some theory, looking at how git stores snapshots and represents history:

git stores history as a graph
git saves snapshots as trees
the .git/ folder is where the magic happens

Then we will configure authentication to github so that we can pull down some code from an existing repository:

how to: configure SSH keys to connect to Github
how to: configure unique SSH keys per client

Next we will look at how git branches and remotes work, what they are and what they are not:

git branches are pointers into history
git remotes are pointers to other repos
most git commands operate locally

Finally we will build on that that to derive an understanding of how some common git command-line tool works.

git: staging and committing changes
git: stashing and retreiving changes
git: don't fear the rebase
git: bisect explained

What about GUI tools?

I have worked with a variety of graphical git tools that allow you to work with git through a Graphical User Interface (GUI), including:

VSCode plugins
on-board context menus in Visual Studio and IntelliJ
Github Desktop
SourceTree
Git-Fork
GitKraken

All of these graphical tools are built as wrappers around the core functionlity exposed through the git command line.

While graphical tools can be useful abstractions I strongly recommend first learning how git works at the command-line level.

Once you understand how git works under the hood every GUI tool will make sense.

A special note about gitk

gitk is a fast, simple tool for visualizing and navigating the history stored in a local git repository, and is the one exception I have to my “learn the CLI first” policy.

gitk comes bundled with the installation of git on windows systems and is available as a separate package when installing git through package managers like yum or brew.

While most git GUIs try to simplify the way git works, gitk’s provides a simple window into your local git repo without any distracting bells and whistles.

Plus it is lightning fast and rock-solid stable just like git itself.

Okay, let’s get started!

This index will appear on all the posts in this series:

This post is part of a series on Git Fundamentals: