Software Testing is part of software development. So you need a form of revision control for your source aka test code, and documents. You also need it to be able to review code, compare the history of code… or maybe simply to help others to master it.

We recently started our migration from Subversion to Git. Not because we have been unsatisfied with SVN, mostly because we want to use what our customers use. Additionally we want to profit from the different functionality Git offers, such as local commits and cheap branching.

But Git is different and just changing the tool does not change anything, it might even turns things worse. Because you cannot run Git like SVN. Well, you can, but that still requires you to know the basics of Git to understand what it will do to your work and how a typical workflow looks like. The commands are different too.

So we created this tutorial to get used to Git, understand, and learn it.

It starts slow with the basics, explains some terms and concepts, and later picks up speed when it talks about rebasing and merging. Everything is explained with commands you can execute quickly in your own test project. Command line rulez!

Not everything is explained of course. Basically what you don’t need to know to master Git has been intentionally left out. Google it or immerse in the official documentation, if you need to know.

So enjoy the tutorial, use it, copy it, share it. The entire presentation is licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution Share-Alike. Our way of saying “Thank you” to the Git open source community.

You can download the Libreoffice document if you want to modify it, take things out, or simply go with a different style: GIT-the-incomplete-overview.odp. Fonts are embedded, so that hopefully works ok.

If you prefer the easy way aka the PDF, you can download it right here as well: GIT-the-incomplete-overview.pdf.