Source Control Management With Git
From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection
| Description | A tutorial, reference guide, and detailed explanation of all things git. |
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Git is a distributed version control system (VCS) created by Linus Torvalds. It is free and GPLed so it is available to anyone to do whatever they want as long as they give back their modifications. It operates on a decentralized architecture, and is currently used to manage the Linux kernel.
Unlike popular non-distributed predecessors such as Subversion and CVS, git only needs a central server for one thing: publishing changes to other users of the central server. You can examine the full development history and commit changes on your own computer, and share changes directly with other people, without needing to consult the central server.
Git contrasts also with the monolithic applications Subversion and CVS by its design: it is a typical Unix toolset containing lots of small components that do single atomic tasks. As of Git v1.5.3, the suite of utilities collectively referred to as "git" consists of 143 commands. You do not need to know all of these to use git! Most of them are for specialized use, and a large fraction are intended to be useful inside shell scripts rather than to end users.
All things git and official come from git.or.cz. This book is not currently the official git documentation or even a source for it.
