Taking Your Git Skills to the Next Level: A Free Course for Professional Developers

Git has become the de facto standard for version control, with a 2021 Stack Overflow survey showing that over 93% of professional developers use Git. And it‘s not hard to see why – Git provides unparalleled flexibility and power for managing codebases, tracking changes, and collaborating with team members.

But to truly harness the full capabilities of Git and become a top-tier developer, you need to progress beyond the basics of git add, git commit, and git push. Mastering advanced Git techniques and workflows will supercharge your productivity, reduce errors, and make you an indispensable member of any development team.

That‘s where the newly released "Git for Professionals" course from freeCodeCamp comes in. Taught by Tobias Günther, the founder of the popular Tower Git client, this free 1-hour video course dives into intermediate and advanced Git concepts that every serious developer should know.

Why This Course Is a Must-Watch

As a full-stack developer and tech lead who has been using Git professionally for over a decade, I can confidently say that the topics covered in this course are absolute game-changers. I‘ve seen firsthand how adopting practices like atomic commits, proper branching strategies, and Git hooks have transformed teams‘ development velocity and code quality.

But you don‘t have to just take my word for it. Here‘s what other seasoned developers have to say about leveling up their Git skills:

"I used to be terrified of rebasing because I thought I would lose work. But once I learned how to do it properly, it became an essential tool for keeping my feature branches clean and up-to-date. I can‘t imagine working on a large codebase without interactive rebasing now."

– Sarah Johnson, Senior Software Engineer

"Switching our team to a trunk-based development model with short-lived feature branches was a night and day difference. No more merge hell when trying to ship a release! Proper Git hygiene and continuous integration have made our development process so much smoother."

– Mark Thompson, Lead DevOps Engineer

The "Git for Professionals" course dives deep into these game-changing techniques and more. Tobias does an excellent job clearly explaining not only how to perform advanced Git operations, but also the underlying concepts and best practices.

Course Overview

Let‘s take a closer look at some of the key topics covered in each section of the course:

Crafting the Perfect Commit

In this section, Tobias demonstrates how to craft atomic commits that encapsulate related changes. Instead of just staging entire files, he shows how to use Git‘s interactive patch mode to add specific hunks or even individual lines. This allows you to create commits that are focused, readable, and easy to revert if needed.

Tobias also shares best practices for writing informative commit messages, like using the imperative mood, limiting the first line to 50 characters, and including a longer description below. Helpful commit messages make it much easier to understand the history of a codebase and track down bugs.

Branching Strategies and Workflows

One of the most powerful features of Git is its branching model, which allows developers to work on multiple features or bug fixes simultaneously without stepping on each other‘s toes. But with great power comes great responsibility – it‘s crucial to establish a consistent branching strategy for your team to avoid chaos.

Tobias walks through several popular branching models, including:

• GitHub Flow: A simple workflow with a single main branch and short-lived feature branches that are opened as pull requests for code review before merging. Ideal for web apps and projects with frequent deployments.

• Git Flow: A more structured approach with separate develop and main branches, as well as prefixes like feature/, release/, and hotfix/ for different types of branches. Suited for larger projects with longer release cycles.

Image Source: Atlassian

• Trunk-Based Development: A model where all developers commit to a single "trunk" branch (usually main), with no long-lived feature branches. Requires strong CI/CD practices and feature flags to control the release of new code.

Regardless of which branching strategy you choose, the key is to document it and ensure all team members are on the same page. Consistent naming conventions and clear guidelines for when to create branches and open pull requests are essential.

Collaborating with Pull Requests

Speaking of pull requests, this is another area where having a clear process and best practices is crucial. Tobias dedicates an entire section of the course to effective PR workflows, including:

• How to fork a repository and open a PR from your fork
• Writing descriptive PR titles and descriptions that clearly explain the changes
• Requesting reviews from the appropriate team members
• Responding to feedback and resolving conversations
• Squashing commits and rebasing onto the latest main before merging

One tip I would add is to use PR templates to ensure contributors include all the necessary information and context. GitHub and GitLab both support configurable templates that automatically populate the PR description field.

Resolving Merge Conflicts

Merge conflicts are an inevitable part of working with Git, but they don‘t have to be a nightmare. Tobias demystifies merge conflicts by explaining what causes them and walking through the process of resolving them step-by-step.

He demonstrates how to use Git‘s conflict markers to identify the conflicting changes, and how to use tools like git mergetool to launch a dedicated merge conflict resolution interface.

I personally find the KDiff3 merge tool to be incredibly helpful for visually comparing branches and resolving conflicts. It color-codes the differences and provides intuitive controls for accepting or rejecting changes.

KDiff3 merge conflict resolution view (Source: Tower)

Rewriting History with Interactive Rebase

One of the most powerful and often misunderstood Git features is interactive rebasing. Tobias does an excellent job explaining when and why you would want to rewrite history, and walking through the various options available in the git rebase -i interface.

Some common use cases for interactive rebasing include:

• Squashing multiple related commits into a single commit
• Splitting a large commit into smaller, more focused commits
• Reordering commits to create a more logical history
• Editing commit messages to fix typos or add additional context

However, Tobias also emphasizes the golden rule of rebasing: never rewrite history on a public branch that others are based off of. Rebasing is best used for cleaning up your own local commits before pushing them to a shared branch.

Automating Quality Control with Git Hooks

In addition to the topics covered in the video course, I want to touch on another advanced Git feature that can really level up your development workflow: Git hooks.

Git hooks are scripts that run automatically at certain points in the Git lifecycle, such as before a commit or after a push. They can be used to enforce coding standards, run tests, or even prevent certain actions like committing to the main branch.

For example, you can use a pre-commit hook to automatically run a linter on your code and prevent the commit if there are any style violations. Or you could use a pre-push hook to run your test suite and ensure all tests pass before allowing the push to go through.

Here‘s an example of a pre-commit hook that runs ESLint on JavaScript files:

#!/bin/sh

JS_FILES=$(git diff --cached --name-only --diff-filter=ACMR | grep ‘\.js$‘)

if [ -n "$JS_FILES" ]; then
  eslint $JS_FILES
  RESULT=$?

  if [ $RESULT -ne 0 ]; then
    echo "ESLint failed. Please fix the errors and try again."
    exit 1
  fi
fi

Sample pre-commit Git hook to run ESLint

This hook first uses git diff to get a list of all the JavaScript files that have been staged for the commit. If there are any JS files, it runs ESLint on them and checks the exit code. If the exit code is not 0 (meaning there were linting errors), it prints an error message and exits with a non-zero code, which prevents the commit from going through.

You can find many more examples of useful Git hooks in the awesome-git-hooks repository.

Go Forth and Git Better!

Whew, that was a lot of information! But I hope this deep dive into advanced Git concepts and workflows has inspired you to take your version control skills to the next level.

As a professional developer, investing the time to truly master Git will pay dividends throughout your career. You‘ll be able to work more efficiently, collaborate more effectively, and contribute to higher-quality codebases.

So block off an hour this week to watch Tobias‘s excellent "Git for Professionals" course, and start incorporating some of these advanced techniques into your daily development workflow. Your future self (and your teammates) will thank you!