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Git and Branching

By Updated

Git is the front door to modern delivery. A push triggers CI, a merge deploys through GitOps, and a revert is often the fastest rollback you have. This track builds a mental model of how Git stores history, so commands stop feeling like magic, and then covers the workflows and recovery skills teams rely on.

What You'll Learn

  • How commits, trees, blobs, branches, and HEAD actually work
  • A clean daily workflow with rebasing, pushing, and pull requests
  • How to choose a branching strategy that fits your delivery model
  • How to undo almost anything — and recover "lost" work with the reflog
  • How to keep repositories healthy: commit conventions, hooks, protected branches, and secrets

Read in This Order

  1. How Git Works — objects, the staging area, refs, HEAD, and what a branch really is
  2. Everyday Workflow — configuration, branching, committing, rebasing vs merging, and pushing safely
  3. Branching Strategies — trunk-based development, GitHub flow, GitFlow, release branches, and merge methods
  4. Undo and Recovery — restore, reset, revert, reflog, cherry-pick, stash, and bisect
  5. Collaboration and Repository Hygiene — commit messages, signed commits, pre-commit hooks, rulesets, large files, and leaked secrets

Commands by Situation

I want to… Command
See what changed git status, git diff, git diff --staged
Start new work git switch -c feature/login main
Update my branch with main git fetch && git rebase origin/main
Undo uncommitted changes to a file git restore path/to/file
Fix the last commit git commit --amend
Undo a pushed commit git revert <sha>
Find a lost commit git reflog
Find which commit broke something git bisect

Try It Interactively

Reflog rescue reads your git reflog output and tells you which commit to go back to after a bad reset, rebase, or amend, or where a deleted branch last pointed.

How Git Connects to the Rest of the Site

Next

Start with How Git Works.