Mastering Git by McCullough and Berglund

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Summary:Definitely worth considering

I got back to this one after a while. First time I have watched this material, I was amazed. Now, I have cooled down a little bit, and I have slightly different perspective. Today, I am not only interested in git, but I actually use it. That’s why I can see more drawbacks then few months ago. But still, I think this is good tutorial.

When it comes to good sides of the material, for sure you have to count in the way it is presented. The point here is that you get the gentle introduction and explanation of all basic concepts related to git. All the concepts that can be presented with samples, are shown on screen as they are described. It makes them super easy to follow.

Did you know that “.git” is a literally all you need to have an access to your repository? If not, you will learn that, as well as details related to branches, tags, and HEAD (refs) management.

If you use SVN you probably know that working with branches might be a challenge due to the issues related to time consumption and merging related issues. The tendency, in SVN based projects, is to skip branching at all and putting all the codes into trunk. This is quite common practice. On the other hand, git offers cheap branching. And this topic is discussed in this video quite through. On the other hand, pay attention to that part as it is very important and for the beginners it might be confusing as branching concept is slightly different here from SVN. You should really watch this part few times, in case it is required, to get it fully understood.

And one remark. Try to follow the tutorial with your local git repository.

Apart from that you will get of course remarks on tagging and merging. Which are most common tasks to be done with the versioning system.

Pros:

– covers all the basics of the git that will let you work with git with correct understanding of all basic concepts
– covers branching, merging, tagging which are most common things you will probably perform during development
– the whole session is based on a tutorial that starts with creation of the repository and then is extended with further topics – if you follow it from start to the end it is hard to get lost

Drawbacks:

– audio and video are out of sync at some point, and it takes time to get used to it
– some concepts – especially the introduction – are little bit too long
– the way interaction between Tim and Matthew (in terminals) is done is OK – two separate terminal screens, where you can see what is happening. But, believe me, in Mastering Advanced GIT they have excelled even more. Trust me!
– some people mention that you can find similar material on the youtube as well. And that’s true. You can save some money here. But I would argue with that approach. The content, here, is made strictly as tutorial session with very well structured flow of the material. So, you have to decide
– lack of the syllabus. It would be great to have it for download so you can refer to in on fly

O’Reilly: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920017462.do
Safari Books Online: http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9781449304737?portal=oreilly&cid=orm-cat-readnow-9781449304737