Mastering Git

Front Cover
Packt Publishing Ltd, Apr 21, 2016 - Computers - 418 pages

Attain expert-level proficiency with Git for enhanced productivity and efficient collaboration by mastering advanced distributed version control features

About This BookSet up Git for solo and collaborative developmentHarness the full power of Git version control system to customize Git behavior, manipulate history, integrate external tools and explore platform shortcutsA detailed guide, which explains how to apply advanced Git techniques and workflows and ways to handle submodulesWho This Book Is For

If you are a Git user with reasonable knowledge of Git and familiarity with basic concepts such as branching, merging, staging, and workflows, this is the book for you. Basic knowledge of installing Git and software configuration management concepts is essential.

What You Will LearnExplore project history, find revisions using different criteria, and filter and format how history looksManage your working directory and staging area for commits and interactively create new revisions and amend themSet up repositories and branches for collaborationSubmit your own contributions and integrate contributions from other developers via merging or rebasingCustomize Git behavior system-wide, on a per-user, per-repository, and per-file basisTake up the administration and set up of Git repositories, configure access, find and recover from repository errors, and perform repository maintenanceChose a workflow and configure and set up support for the chosen workflowIn Detail

Git is one of the most popular types of Source Code Management (SCM) and Distributed Version Control System (DVCS). Despite the powerful and versatile nature of the tool enveloping strong support for nonlinear development and the ability to handle large projects efficiently, it is a complex tool and often regarded as “user-unfriendly”. Getting to know the ideas and concepts behind the architecture of Git will help you make full use of its power and understand its behavior. Learning the best practices and recommended workflows should help you to avoid problems and ensure trouble-free development.

The book scope is meticulously designed to help you gain deeper insights into Git's architecture, its underlying concepts, behavior, and best practices. Mastering Git starts with a quick implementation example of using Git for a collaborative development of a sample project to establish the foundation knowledge of Git operational tasks and concepts. Furthermore, as you progress through the book, the tutorials provide detailed descriptions of various areas of usage: from archaeology, through managing your own work, to working with other developers. This book also helps augment your understanding to examine and explore project history, create and manage your contributions, set up repositories and branches for collaboration in centralized and distributed version control, integrate work from other developers, customize and extend Git, and recover from repository errors. By exploring advanced Git practices, you will attain a deeper understanding of Git's behavior, allowing you to customize and extend existing recipes and write your own.

Style and approach

Step-by-step instructions and useful information make this book the ultimate guide to understanding and mastering Git. This book will show road to mastery example by example, while explaining mental model of Git. The Introduction section covers the 'Essentials' just for refreshing the basics. The main highlight is that the concepts are based on HOW the technology/framework works and not just practical 'WHAT to do'.

 

Contents

Git Basics in Practice
1
Exploring Project History
23
Developing with Git
61
Managing Your Worktree
89
Collaborative Development with Git
125
Advanced Branching Techniques
165
Merging Changes Together
197
Keeping History Clean
223
Managing Subprojects Building a Living Framework
273
Customizing and Extending Git
311
Git Administration
347
Git Best Practices
369
Index
385
Copyright

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About the author (2016)

Jakub Narebski followed Git development from the very beginning of its creation. He is one of the main contributors to the gitweb subsystem (the original web interface for Git), and is an unofficial gitweb maintainer. He created, announced, and analyzed annual Git User's Surveys from 2007 till 2012—all except the first one (you can find his analysis of those surveys on the Git Wiki). He shares his expertise with the technology on the StackOverflow question-and-answer website. He was one of the proofreaders of the Version Control by Example by Eric Sink, and was the reason why it has chapter on Git. He is an assistant professor in the faculty of mathematics and computer science at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland. He uses Git as a version control system of choice both for personal and professional work, teaching it to computer science students as a part of their coursework.

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