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Adrian Matei
Adrian Matei

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Articles I wish I had read when I started with Git

Recently I presented Git to my colleagues in one of our dev meetings. Prior to that I did some research on the topic, looking through some of my git related bookmarks and on the internet. It resulted the following list of articles I wish I read when I started with git:

I recommend you read the articles in the order listed here

The most confusing git terminology

Especially useful for newcomers, and in particular those who have come from using CVS or Subversion. But also if you are already a git user you may find it refreshing.

Git from the bottom up

In his pursuit to understand Git, it’s been helpful for the author to understand it from the bottom up – rather than look at it only in terms of its high-level commands. And since Git is so beautifully simple when viewed this way, he thought others might be interested to read what he has found.

Learn git concepts, not commands

This is currently the most rated git article on dev.to and for good reason. It is an interactive git tutorial with hand drawings meant to teach you how git works, not just which commands to execute.

Explain Git with D3

This website is designed to help you understand some basic git concepts visually.

Adding/staging your files for commit will not be covered by this site. In all sandbox playgrounds on this site, just pretend that you always have files staged and ready to commit at all times.

Git: Fetch and Merge, Don't Pull

While making a point about why you should use fetch and merge instead of pull, the author introduces you to branch management.

Merging vs. rebasing

Compare git rebase with the related git merge command and identify all of the potential opportunities to incorporate rebasing into the typical Git workflow

The sooner you get to know git rebase the cleaner your git log history will look ;)

Git team workflows: merge or rebase?

The article tries to answer the question - "In a software team using git and feature branching, what's the best way to incorporate finished work back to your main line of development?" Pros and cons of both approaches are presented and also addresses the rebase as local cleanup, which is a different thing than rebase as team policy.

A beginner's guide to GIT BISECT - The process of elimination

It is not until recently that I got to use this command, which helps you reduce the time to find your "faulty" commit exponentially - very useful and easy to use as presented in this article.

A successful Git branching model

This article I did actually read in my first days of Git and even this workflow for a long time in different companies and even in the early stage of Bookmarks.dev development - I leave it here as it shows the easiness of using Git as a version control system where branches are very cheap to manage. Nowadays we mostly use the Github flow which the article also mentions.

Most of articles mentioned here are also find publicly listed and tagged git and beginners on Bookmarks.dev

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