Git, from the basics to team workflow

00 At a glance

Everyone uses Git, but few people know what it actually does. This short workshop starts from how Git works inside so every command makes sense, then moves on to team workflow and the problems teams hit every day.

The length depends on what you want to cover: 4 h for the basics and the workflow, up to 8 h with the deep-dive modules.

Lab One repository, start to finish

Participants create a Git repository and run a series of operations on it:

• opening and closing branches;
• causing and resolving merge conflicts;
• rebasing, to understand what a rebase really does and why you shouldn’t do it on a shared branch.

01 How Git works

• Three kinds of objects: blob, tree and commit.
• Git stores snapshots, not a history of diffs.
• How it saves space (zlib, delta compression), and why binary files are a problem.

02 Local commands

• Inspecting: status, log, diff.
• Preparing a commit: add, mv, rm, restore, reset.
• Committing, and fixing the last commit with --amend.
• Branches: branch, switch, merge.
• Going further: cherry-pick, checkout and rebase.

03 Working with a remote

• clone, fetch, pull, push.
• Rewriting history without overwriting other people’s work: push --force-with-lease.

04 A team workflow

The role of each branch (master, development, release, hotfix, feature, work branches), and how code flows between them. The workshop adapts to the workflow your team already uses.

05 Common problems, and how to get out of them

• A conflict when bringing a hotfix back into development.
• Removing a commit from your branch without losing your work.
• Having merged development into a hotfix branch.
• Bringing a single commit from a feature into development.

+ Deep-dive modules

Depending on your needs, the workshop can extend to 8 h with:

• automating branch creation and closing;
• a deep dive into Git’s internals, to see what happens under each command.