Jamie Bennett Speaks

git is my revision control system of choice. It is immensely powerful and fast but it does have a downside, it’s pretty hard for new users to learn.

Recently I was asked, “what’s the best way to learn git”. I thought a little while, scratched my head some, and said I’d get back to them.

Anyway, I thought the solution I came up with could benefit others so here it is.

There is a wealth of documentation on the Internet, what git is, some beginner tutorials, even lists of useful tips so what is the best way to learn git? Well here is what I think you should do.

Must Reads

and finally, if your not sick of reading by now, there are lots more links on the git documentation page.

Of course, none of the above information is useful unless you actually use the tool so fire up your terminal and play around.

~/.gitconfig

One other thing that may be useful is my ~/.gitconfig file. I’ve simplified it somewhat but the useful parts are below.

~/.gitconfig is the configuration file for git where you can customize git to your hearts content. For a list of available options have a look at the man page for gitconfig or view it online here.


[user]
name = Jamie Bennett
email = jamie@linuxuk.org
[alias]
ci = commit -a
co = checkout
st = status -a
di = diff
br = branch
cl = clone
me = merge
pa = log -p
[apply]
whitespace = strip
[diff]
color = auto
rename = copy
[pager]
color = true
[status]
color = auto


Hope that helps.