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How should a novice explore into the world of git ? (cafe.coffee-break.cc)
submitted 5 days ago by LoveEspresso@cafe.coffee-break.cc to c/linux4noobs@programming.dev
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Imagine a young explorer who's just heard that word, "git". But it actually means an entire world. How is this young explorer supposed to dive into this mysterious world with just a machine in hand ?

He's got vs code though !! And he's also got fish and zsh on WSL !

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[-] forestbeasts@pawb.social 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

That picture you included is kinda weird and misleading IMO.

First thing: Ignore the "central repository". There is none. git works entirely locally (this confuses the hell out of people who grew up with CVS/SVN, for some reason). You CAN push and pull to other people's computers, if you want, or your own other computer; all Github or whatever is is a "someone else's computer" in the cloud that you can push to. But you also don't need a remote repository at all. Most of ours don't have one.

Seconding https://learngitbranching.js.org/. It's quite nice.

Some stuff you should know:

  • A commit is a snapshot of everything in the project (that was added to git at the time).
  • A branch is basically just a movable tag pointing to the latest commit, with which you can get to previous commits by walking the chain backwards; when you make a new commit, you move the branch to point to it.
  • You can make alternate timelines by going back to a previous commit (without moving your branch pointer), making a new branch pointer (and switching to it), and editing/committing/etc. That's why they're called branches.
  • There's an undo history for where your branch has been, git reflog. Can save your butt if a rebase or whatever goes sideways and you get screwed up.
  • All your history is in the .git folder in your project folder. Everything. If you back that up you've got the whole history of the project.

-- Frost

[-] LoveEspresso@cafe.coffee-break.cc 1 points 2 days ago

I'm unable to play that game. I need more interactive guidance than what the website provides.

Do the developers have any account on GitHub where I can pull up an issue ?

[-] LoveEspresso@cafe.coffee-break.cc 1 points 3 days ago

Hello Frost, l need to play with git in order to understand how it works. The picture that l have put up is random. Posting a picture creates a link on piefed, which enables crossposting, hence putting up an image.

Nice to see your reply after quite sometime.

Right now l wish to toy with vs code. I've downloaded one yesterday. I'm not familiar with this this tool yet. It can be used used independently on windows 10, but I wish to use it on WSL.

Can you suggest me some introductory course/tutorial ?

[-] forestbeasts@pawb.social 2 points 3 days ago

uuuhh..? I got no idea how to use VS Code, I don't use VS Code. I'm more a Kate wolf myself. (And vim, but vim is weird and clunky at first and would probably just be frustrating.)

*shoots piefed a very confused look*

Unless you meant a tutorial on git, in which case, the learngitbranching.js.org one is great.

this post was submitted on 31 May 2026
26 points (86.1% liked)

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