Flowchart to help Git Newbies understand what's happening

o_o@programming.dev to Programming@programming.dev – 187 points –

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/223663

Hey folks!

I've noticed that it's often difficult for newcomers to git to understand what the heck is happening and how the commands work.

Here's a flowchart that has helped me explain things in the past, and (more than once) folks have asked me for a copy of it to use as a cheat sheet. Hope it's helpful!

I’ve crossposted this in multiple places where I think it’s relevant. Hope y’all get some use out of it too! (Mods, please let me know if I should take it down)

EDIT: added non-transparent image, hopefully more visible for dark mode users.

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Don't know if this is just something that I'm seeing on my side, or maybe you did it intentionally, but most of the top portion is transparent, which makes it hard to parse when viewing in dark mode. Otherwise, pretty solid graphic 👍

Thanks for calling this out! Fixed, I hope. Wasn’t intentional.

Came here to say this. Never assume everyone uses your same configurations when sharing a document.

[YOINK!]

Definitely adding to my own cheatsheet that I manually created with info from the various git tutorials I've read/watched. Very nice to have a visual representation.

Thank you!

Very helpful graphic for newcomers to git and github. It took me a year of seriously using them to have a mental model of how they work. I wish I had this when I started using them.

The file has a transparent background, making some lines invisible

Thanks! You know you're looking at a great instructive diagram when you never again need to refer to it!

I've been having a tough time getting past the first chapter, so to speak, and I think this solves it for me.

Also, the dark mode fix seems to work.