Git Magic

http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~blynn/gitmagic/

by llambda • 14 years ago

229 24 14 years ago

www-cs-students.stanford.edu

aiscott• 14 years ago

I didn't think I would like this. I'm a nuts and bolts kind of person and I like to try to understand from the ground up if I can.

However, this is a pretty good narrative, and is filling in some blanks for me. For instance, the git whatchanged command was new to me.

graywh• 14 years ago

Previous discussions:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=161867

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=267462

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1064027

arscan2• 14 years ago

So, off topic a little here, but does anybody else find the "title" attribute on the main content divs to be very irritating? Apparently I read with my mouse cursor sometimes (I didn't realize I did this), and that pesky "title" attribute constantly causes a tooltip to get in my way.

malingo• 14 years ago

Yes that has bugged me quite a bit; I first noticed it when reading his essay on C [1]. But since then I've installed Vimium [2] and I never even touch the mouse anymore.

[1] http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~blynn/c/

[2] http://vimium.github.com/

arscan2• 14 years ago

Thanks, for both links

legoforte• 14 years ago

Yes, I think it's extremely irritating.

manojlds2• 14 years ago

What do they mean by the below in the Git shortcomings section:

Git on MSys is an alternative requiring minimal runtime support, though a few of the commands need some work.

Need some work on what? I hate it when some statements are made without giving any explanation

manojlds2• 14 years ago

And this one:

Git may be disadvantaged more than other systems because single files are not tracked

Though I get what they are trying to tell here ( I know git to an extent), a newbie will definitely be lead down the wrong path with this line. I am doubting this entire thing has any magic at all.

JBiserkov• 14 years ago

From ReleaseNotes.rtf

Known issues -Some commands are not yet supported on Windows, namely: git archimport, git cvsexportcommit, git cvsimport, git cvsserver, git instaweb, git shell. -git and bash have serious problems with non-ASCII file names (Issue 80, 159)

There are other known issues, but I think those are the most important.

yuvadam• 14 years ago

All these git tutorials are nice, and they might be beneficial for some people.

Personally, I find all these supposedly-helpful analogies useless and confusing. If I start to learn git, I would rather someone just tell me three things:

1. Git saves 'entire' snapshots of a directory on each commit. 2. Each commit resides in a graph and has a pointer to its parent 3. The only commit with more than one parent is a merge commit - which carries data on how to merge two previous commits.

uses• 14 years ago

Indeed, Scott Chacon's technical explanations of Git provided my biggest gains in understanding.

http://vimeo.com/14629850

js2• 14 years ago

<pedantic>There are also root commits that have zero parents (a repo can have multiple roots). A merge commit differs _only_ in that it has more than one parent; it otherwise carries no additional data compared to any other commit.</pedantic>

The special treatment that you see when you "git show" a merge commit is computed by comparing the merge commit's tree to its parents' trees.

I'd also add a (4) to your list: a branch is a pointer (a "ref" in git jargon) to a commit that is updated to the most recent commit each time you create a new commit.

Oh, and maybe (5): HEAD is usually an indirect pointer to a commit via a ref, but can also point directly to a commit in which case it is a so-called detached HEAD.

icefox2• 14 years ago

You can even have repositories that only have root commits. I have a git hack that stores blog entries in a git repository. Each entry is a root commit with one branch that points to all of the root commits. A fun crazy hack.

alinajaf• 14 years ago

> 1. Git saves 'entire' snapshots of a directory on each commit.

Every time I've tried to explain this to someone who doesn't understand how gits content addressable data-store works, I've been met with disbelief or mockery. These days I just point people to the docs.

DiabloD3• 14 years ago

Yeah, I don't why people don't understand persistent key/value stores using a has as the key. Its no different than any other typical use of any other typical kv store (such as BDB and such).

Git is rather well engineered for what it set out to do.

charolastrauno• 14 years ago

I'm sitting next to Ben right now, and he's blushing at all the attention. He says he keeps meaning to do a v2.

Anyway, if you really like this, you should consider getting a physical copy: http://www.amazon.com/Git-Magic-Ben-Lynn/dp/1451523343/

vessenes• 14 years ago

Hey Ben,

A request for v2 -- I'd like more on topic branches, and good git hygiene. I usually send people to your book, and in fact, I learned my first git from it.

In the end, though, it encourages using git as a sort of backup-and-restore system, which is not the best and highest use of git.

The best and highest use of git is going to involve rebasing, collecting up and properly naming your commits, and making CERTAIN that one commit does one atomic thing to your codebase.

This just wasn't that obvious to me from git magic, but I think in the end it's the best part of git as a whole. Once I get people to stop using git reset --hard, my next training task is usually what I just described.

So, you know, pretty please? :)

chimeracoder• 14 years ago

Any chance of a Kindle/ebook version? It's already free online, but it might make for a bit more pleasant reading on a tablet/mobile device.

FraaJad• 14 years ago

The source[1] is in asciidoc format, use a2x [2] to convert it to epub.

[1] git clone git://repo.or.cz/gitmagic.git [2] http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/a2x.1.html

ljlolel• 14 years ago

There are simpler tutorials: http://www.jperla.com/blog/post/teach-yourself-git-in-2-minu...

mister_m• 14 years ago

This is hard for me to understand with the abbreviated commands.

wsxiaoys• 14 years ago

The Simplified Chinese version looks like a machine translation.

Git Magic

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