Learn Git Branching

Post by archgoon » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 11:00 PM UTC

xxbondsxx wrote: post #77

archgoon wrote: post #55

This tutorial is great, but it propagates a misconception about git. "A commit in git is a recorded set of changes that you have made" Git commits are _not_ deltas. They are entire snapshots of the repository and a single (optional) pointer to an ancestor commit[1]. Git may handle _compression_ in terms of deltas (see 'Packfiles' in [2]), but logically, a commit should be thought of as equivalent to the state of all…

Thanks a ton for catching this. I guess there is a distinction to be made -- the compression might use delta's, but a commit specifies the entire state of the repository. It's a tricky line to walk though, because commands like "git show" and "git patch" clearly show the delta-like nature of a single commit. I also don't want newcomers to think that commits are heavy and should be used sparingly. I'm totally down to…

Post by ndonnellan » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 11:05 PM UTC

xxbondsxx wrote: post #27

Wow! Author here, did not expect this to get submitted to HN yet (was going to finish out a few more levels this weekend and clean everything up). Forgive the giant "TODO" in the help dialog The link everyone should see is the demo: http://pcottle.github.com/learnGitBranching/?demo That shows a few example commands, the completion of a level, and finishes with the help dialog. Some interesting technical highlights -…

Post by xxbondsxx » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 11:15 PM UTC

ndonnellan wrote: post #83

xxbondsxx wrote: post #27

Wow! Author here, did not expect this to get submitted to HN yet (was going to finish out a few more levels this weekend and clean everything up). Forgive the giant "TODO" in the help dialog The link everyone should see is the demo: http://pcottle.github.com/learnGitBranching/?demo That shows a few example commands, the completion of a level, and finishes with the help dialog. Some interesting technical highlights -…

So cool! I'm new to git (coming from mercurial) and think this would be awesome as a general purpose tutorial. Unfortunately it seems to assume some knowledge. For example, rebase is introduced in a very understandable way, but then I need to know what "rebase -i HEAD~4" does without being introduced to those concepts.

Post by ndonnellan » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 11:19 PM UTC

xxbondsxx wrote: post #85

ndonnellan wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So cool! I'm new to git (coming from mercurial) and think this would be awesome as a general purpose tutorial. Unfortunately it seems to assume some knowledge. For example, rebase is introduced in a very understandable way, but then I need to know what "rebase -i HEAD~4" does without being introduced to those concepts.

True true, I was hoping to have a complete tutorial on positioning -- what master^^ does, HEAD~4, all of that. It was on my todo list but (for the millionth time) it got submitted without my knowledge. Open up a github issue and I'll definitely throw something up

Post by cocoflunchy » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 11:23 PM UTC

csense wrote: post #86

cocoflunchy wrote: post #67

This is a great tool, thanks so much ! I have trouble understanding the rebase workflow: What is the difference between these two sequences? git checkout -b bugFix git commit -m "fix" git checkout master git commit -m "master stuff" git rebase bugFix git checkout bugFix git rebase master and git checkout -b bugFix git commit -m "fix" git checkout master git commit -m "master stuff" git checkout bugFix git rebase mast…

Rebase works by discarding commits and replacing them with different commits. If you rebase, then anyone who has the old commits in their repo will have to use git reset --hard to switch to the new branch. In other words, rebase inconveniences all other users of a branch. So you can use it freely on branches that only you work on, but you should be reluctant to use it on branches used by other people -- especially po…