Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
45 lines (28 loc) · 2.07 KB

chapter-02.md

File metadata and controls

45 lines (28 loc) · 2.07 KB

Git under the hood

Git uses a hidden folder

When you create a new project and initialize a Git repo using git init, a hidden folder is created called .git which has all the git magic inside.

andrew@catnip:~/dev/cm/git-going$ ll
total 28
drwxrwxr-x  5 andrew andrew 4096 Oct 14 14:06 ./
drwxrwxr-x 32 andrew andrew 4096 Oct 14 09:49 ../
drwxrwxr-x  2 andrew andrew 4096 Oct 14 14:02 chapters/
drwxrwxr-x  8 andrew andrew 4096 Oct 14 15:30 .git/
drwxrwxr-x  2 andrew andrew 4096 Oct 14 12:43 images/
-rw-rw-r--  1 andrew andrew 1076 Oct 14 14:07 LICENSE
-rw-rw-r--  1 andrew andrew  802 Oct 14 15:29 README.md

How Git keeps track

Git uses a SHA (cryptographic hash) of each change/commit to keep track of these changes.

  • The .git/ directory holds subdirectories for objects, refs, config, index, HEAD, and more.

  • The objects/ folder is where the three objects: commit, tree and blob are housed. Each object gets its own sub folder.

  • The refs/ folder holds references to all of the objects in the directory. Let's say you have some orphaned objects on branches that no longer exist. You can go into this folder and prune them off of your branch.

  • The config/ folder contains all of your configurations including the credentials you use to connect to GitHub; your email and name that you used to configure your global config.

  • The HEAD file is what contains the pointer or reference to your working directory or branch and its latest commit.

  • The index file is for when you use "git add" to stage your files for a commit. They leave the index file after the commit.

NOTE: Git uses Merkle Tree Hashing to encrypt its files and make them tamper proof.

Reference: https://matthew-brett.github.io/curious-git/git_object_types.html

MIT Licensed and prepared for Varsity College by Cyber-Mint (Pty) Ltd
Teamfu ™ is a trademark of Cyber-Mint (Pty) Ltd.
© Copyright 2022, Cyber-Mint (Pty) Ltd.