Git¶
A comprehensive course on Git - from your first commit through the internals of the object model, collaboration workflows across platforms, and advanced operations at scale. These guides take you from "I know I should use version control" to understanding Git deeply enough to debug, optimize, and architect workflows around it.
Each guide is self-contained, but the order below follows a natural learning path.
Guides¶
Foundations
1 Start HereThe history of version control from RCS through SVN to distributed systems, and why Linus Torvalds built Git for the Linux kernel.
Git's core mental model - the working tree, staging area, and committed history. Covers the file lifecycle, .gitignore syntax, and the .git directory.
What a commit actually stores and how to explore history. Covers commit anatomy, effective messages, git log formatting, and git diff.
Branches as movable pointers, not copies. Covers fast-forward vs three-way merges, conflict resolution, and git switch vs git checkout.
Core Workflows
5Working with code that lives somewhere else. Covers clone, fetch vs pull, push, tracking branches, and SSH vs HTTPS authentication.
When and how to clean up commit history. Covers amend, interactive rebase, cherry-pick, revert vs reset, and the reflog as a safety net.
Interrupting work without losing it. Covers git stash, multiple working trees with git worktree, and git clean.
Making Git work the way you want. Covers configuration levels, aliases, diff/merge tools, conditional includes, and .gitattributes.
Git Internals
9Git as a content-addressable filesystem. Covers blobs, trees, commits, annotated tags, SHA-1 hashing, and building commits with plumbing commands.
How Git names things and connects them. Covers references, symbolic refs, the directed acyclic graph, garbage collection, and packfiles.
How fetch and push work at the protocol level. Covers SSH, smart HTTP, pack negotiation, shallow clones, and git bundle.
Platform Collaboration
12Choosing how your team works with Git. Covers centralized, feature branch, Gitflow, trunk-based, and forking workflows.
Platform-specific features and tooling. Covers PRs vs MRs, CI/CD configuration, CLIs, code owners, and platform migration.
Advanced Operations
14Automating quality checks and workflows. Covers every hook type, hook frameworks, git bisect, git blame, and smudge/clean filters.
Signing, credentials, and secret management. Covers GPG and SSH signing, credential helpers, secret scanning, and git filter-repo.
Git at enterprise scale. Covers sparse checkout, partial clones, commit graphs, Scalar, submodules vs subtrees, and build system integration.
The recovery playbook. Covers reflog recovery, undoing common mistakes, Git LFS, performance diagnosis, and repository corruption repair.