Git Pocket Guide: A Working Introduction

I bought this book to learn a few basic commands -- after a couple of decades using other version control systems, I just wasn't quite getting the weird terminology and shocking over-complexity of git. This book was no help at all. Its ponderous, obfuscated language and self-referential jargon had me hopelessly confused by page 3.

(the bottom of page 3 is a particularly egregious example, where an important concept is explained as "following the arrows backwards in the diagram," but the arrows are pointing from right to left -- I never did figure out which direction to follow the arrows. Neither direction quite made sense with the text.

Another example, from p19: "A Git branch is the simplest thing possible: a pointer to a commit, as a ref." (none of the terms "branch," "pointer," "commit", or "ref" are property explained: some are defined, but only with self- or circular references. if that's what the author considers the simplest thing possible, obviously he can't explain the simplest thing possible).

No one who needs this book could read it, and no one who reads it would need to.

After reading another reviewers comment : 'I had concluded git was a psychological experiment designed by insane people as an amusement. ' - I hit Buy immediately. This is definitely the book for me. I concluded early on using git that while I could follow 'cookbook' directions I was missing something fundamental - I simply didn't understand what was going on 'under the hood'.

What I learned from this book is amazing - even if ignore the the fact that git is a source control tool - the underlying data model and operations are fascinating and unique - well worth reading even if you never use git in your life. Its so different you need to try to completely forget any preconceptions you have of other source control systems, even document management systems and start with a blank slate.

Finally I know that Git *was* designed by insane people - *brilliant* insane people - but not for amusement, but rather pure genius turned into rock solid engineering in ways I could not previously imagine possible.

As others have mentioned, this book sure is long for a pocket guide. It's small, but densely packed with repetitive text. The author will summarize some dense paragraphs with "It should be clear that.... ". Trust me, if the author is having to summarize a sequence of long paragraphs with another long paragraph that starts with "It should be clear", chances are it isn't clear.

I was hoping for more value for my money, and as others have said, 200+ pages really dilutes the quick-reference qualities that one desires for a tool. Learning Git isn't the goal. Getting some semblance of team-wide version control is just a means to a more cohesive end. The book may turn me around, since I'm still only halfway through it, but I'd get something different.

Maybe it's just me, but for something so relatively simple, the author makes Git sound more complex than Calculus II
is to Freshmen. I'm kind of looking for the College Algebra level of Git. I'd even settle for Calc III Git.

This is a very useful book. It is not a typical "pocket guide," a book that contains only enough information to remind you of what you already know. The book is organized well but is too verbose to serve as a quick reference. This book should have been titled "Just enough Git" because it contains a lot of explanations that will help the user understand how Git works and it contains examples that show how to use Git in certain common workflows. Note, this book probably will not serve as an introduction for a person who is completely unfamiliar with Git, and certainly not for someone who is completely unfamiliar with version control. Read some of the online tutorials before you pick up this book. Also note, if you plan to use TortoiseGit this book assumes the user is doing all operations on the command line...which you won't do with TortoiseGit. However, I've found that now that I've read this book I have a much better understanding of how to use TortoiseGit.

This is an excellent and fun to read introduction to the git version control system. I'll be recommending it to friends and colleagues whenever they want to learn more about git.

What I appreciate most about the book is it begins by diving into a description git internals rather than starting with trivial examples. I had been using git for years but before reading this book I was confounded by git's design, workflow and nomenclature decisions. Having "grown up" with CVS, SVN, P4, etc. I had concluded git was a psychological experiment designed by insane people as an amusement. But within the first few sections of this book much of what hadn't been clear to me before all started to make sense. After reading this book I've moved the authors of git out of the "insane" category and into the "insane genius" category.

There's a free by Creative License book about Git which is far better, and is offered free in HTML, PDF, MOBI and EPUB versions.

Pro Git book; Scott Chacon; Apress
[...]

Albeit, I love O'Reilly books because they're usually the best publisher of Computer Programming related material and they offer many discounts for the public. However when it gets to some books such as this O'Reilly Git book, I found the author was trying to teach me the inner workers of Git, when I just wanted to more quickly learn how to use Git and mitigate some of it's confusions about "git staging", for which simply stating "git -a commit" can quickly solve for those of us not using staging.

A pocket guide should be just that, a very effective concise guide how to use a tool. Instead, the Pro Git books is far better, and it's free!

Very concise and easy to read introduction to Git. You can tell that the author is not being paid by the word, any info that is provided is provided for a reason and the information is all in a very carefully thought out order. There is so little redundant information that if you were to read the chapters out of order just slightly or skip the first chapter you would be at a serious disadvantage compared to a reader that hadn't.

If I ever need any books on other topics Richard E. Silverman has written about I will buy them before any others. I can only assume his code is equally clean.

This book is the perfect size! Short and concise description of each command and it's options. It has had all of the commands I ever needed to look for! Perfect quick reference. I use it quite often. A co-worker used it and subsequently ordered one.

git is one of those necessary tools you may frequently use to complete a project. But git itself is not part of the final application, is just a source control tool. It's necessary, but as a tool you wouldn't want to spend too much time on it. If you know the basic concepts, a very short command line reference would be all you need. And where to find such a quick and short reference if not in a ...pocket guide?

Well, this "Pocket Guide" has over 200 pages and way too much blah-blah. It tries to explain too much about git and fails its purpose.

I'm still getting used to the book, and maybe I will grow to love it, but so far I'm disappointed.
I was hoping the pocket guide would be a quick start guide with common commands/ how-tos, etc. For instance, while there is a section explaining the .gitignore file, it doesn't tell you how to create one. I also couldn't figure out how to clean up all the ignored files after creating the .gitignore.
That being said, it is definitely for the more advanced as I find I have to research the topic to understand what the book is telling me. In that regards, I wish they had saved on the space trying to explain the topics and just gave you the commands.