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Discussion on: What dev topic do you think you should understand, but don't?

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Ryan Latta

While its true that git kind of demands you understand it on some level before it plays nice with you there are basically 3 things that will destroy work (And even then a wizard can perform a ritual to bring it back).

  1. push -f If you get asked to do that its because you've done something to re-write history in a way that is inconsistent. Stop there.

  2. rebase rebase is a command that allows you to re-write history. You'll see lots of advice to use it to clean up commits, or to do a pull --rebase. Either way, history is re-written. pull --rebase is actually pretty benign and can be used most of the time. When you get a conflict though, it can get messy as you'll be re-writing your already finished commits.

  3. reset --hard <commit> This little one basically will have you go back in time. Harmless when you are using it on a commit that you haven't pushed. Uncool when you do it to commits that have already been pushed/pulled. It'll likely trigger a prompt to do a push -f

Git does take time to understand and get comfortable with. It supports a variety of workflows and styles. That flexibility often means its pretty confusing to get used to. For the overwhelming majority of use cases you'll rarely need any of the commands I mentioned.