Introduction

The world of version control systems (VCSs) has undergone a major shift over the past few years. Fast, reliable, and approachable distributed version control systems (DVCSs) such as Git have burst onto the scene and changed the landscape of open source software development and corporate software workflows.

This book is your guide to this new paradigm. It’s not a complete reference; instead, it focuses on getting you up and running quickly. Pragmatic Guide to Git covers the 95 percent of Git that you’ll use at least once a week, as well as a few tasks that will come in handy but aren’t used as often.

Git started when the license of VCS software that the Linux kernel used to track changes was revoked. After investigating the other alternatives, Linus Torvalds decided he could write a better version control system in a few weeks than what currently existed, so he set off to do that.

Git, then in a very rough form, was the result of that two weeks of hacking together some shell scripts back in the spring of 2005. Linus had to calculate pieces of the commits by hand on the first few commits (commits are the changes Git tracks for you). Since those original hand-rolled commits, Git has become the leader in the field of DVCS.