Learn Git in a Day

What You'll Learn

Throughout this guide, you'll build a small Python calculator app. The app itself is intentionally simple - it's not the point. Git is the point. The calculator just gives us real files to track, real commits to make, and real conflicts to resolve. Each chapter adds new features to the calculator while introducing new Git concepts, so the project grows alongside your skills.

By the end of this guide, you'll be able to do all of the required Git tasks that you'll encounter in a real software job, including these:

• Explain what version control is and why every software team relies on it

• Set up Git on your machine with your name, email, and preferred settings

• Turn any folder into a tracked project and start recording its history

• Understand the three places your files live in Git - your working directory, the staging area, and the repository - and move changes between them with confidence

• Choose exactly which changes to include in a snapshot and which to leave out

• Browse your project's full history and inspect any past version in detail

• Throw away edits you don't want before they're saved

• Pull a file back out of the staging area without losing your changes

• Reverse a change that's already been saved, without rewriting history

• Set aside unfinished work, switch to something else, and come back to it later

• Work on multiple features or fixes at the same time using branches, without them interfering with each other

• Combine work from different branches into one

• Resolve situations where two people changed the same lines in the same file

• Connect your local project to a server so your code is backed up and accessible from anywhere

• Authenticate securely with a remote server without typing passwords

• Upload your latest work so teammates can see it

• Download and incorporate changes others have made