Git in Depth
Internals, Workflows, and Repository Operations.
Planned
Git stores history as a graph of content-addressed objects, and every command either adds to that graph or moves refs across it. This book will cover that model from the inside: what lives in .git, how commits, trees, and blobs fit together, what merge and rebase actually rewrite, and how team workflows and day-to-day repository operations map onto plumbing you can inspect.
Status: planned title. Writing has not started. The repository and the cover exist; the scope below is the plan.
The first edition will ship DRM-free as PDF and EPUB, with free updates.
The version control model, end to end.
No chapters are written yet. This is the plan: the areas the book will cover, in the order a reader would meet them. It targets current upstream Git.
- The object model Blobs, trees, commits, and tags in a content-addressed store, and how refs and the index tie a working tree to history.
- Internals on disk What lives in .git: loose objects, packfiles and deltas, refs, and the plumbing commands that expose them.
- History operations Merge, rebase, cherry-pick, and reset, with what each one rewrites and what it leaves in the reflog.
- Workflows Branching and review models for solo work and for teams, and how each one maps onto refs and remotes.
- Repository operations Transfer protocols, hooks, submodules, large files, and the maintenance that keeps big repositories fast.
- Recovery and integrity The reflog, fsck, and lost-commit recovery, plus signed commits and tags for verifiable history.
For engineers who keep their work in Git.
This book is for developers and operators who use Git professionally. It assumes daily use and comfort with the command line, and it explains the model behind the commands rather than listing recipes.
- Developers who want to predict what merge, rebase, and reset will do before running them, working from the object graph rather than habit.
- Team and release engineers choosing branching and review workflows who want to see the tradeoffs each model carries.
- Platform engineers who host repositories, run hooks and mirrors, and need repository maintenance and recovery to be routine.
Planned.
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