So nice to see this get picked up, and honestly surprised to see the interest in what I think of as an extremely esoteric area. Few things:
- Just released an Edition 1.1 that fixed some small errors, amended a few chapters content, and removed some general bluster. I'm going to try and, well, version these.
- New things are coming to Git, and I suspect I'll be talking about Git Futures or A Post-Git World soon enough.
- I'll have a couple more highly practical chapters coming soon, focused on pragmatic organizational adoption, e.g., on wrapping the git CLI to best practices
alxgsv
I never faced git performance issues when working with code. Guess my repos weren't bit. But when I tried to use git as a versioned database of changes in my pet project, I learned a lot about indexes, compacting, etc. Article covers a lot and is very helpful!
ergl
Surprise, surprise, another piece of LLM-generated slop on the front page of HN.
From chapter 1:
> When Git slows down, engineers adapt in bad ways. They stop asking questions the history could answer. They batch work to avoid sync cost. They keep messy branches alive longer, postpone cleanup, and treat the repository like something slightly dangerous.
> Once machines start producing code at machine cadence, the model from this book does not break. What changes is the pace: more branches, more commits, more automation, and more surrounding metadata. The traffic gets louder, and the features that keep Git legible under pressure move from "nice to have" to "essential."
> These stop looking like side optimizations. They are what keep machine-scale Git traffic usable.
show comments
hmpc
Similarly, if not performance-focused, I can wholeheartedly recommend Building Git[0], which walks you through building your own git clone in Ruby (although the language is immaterial).
Git is industry standard, because for what it give you it's a remarkably robust and simple program to use. We're all vaguely aware that the internals are complex, but the UX is clean and usable enough that the complexity usually doesn't leak out.
But the day this breaks down and I have to deal with bloom filters, packfiles, maintaining the git garbage collector or rerere cleanup, is the day I switch our codebase to a centralized VCS.
This stuff is cool to learn about; but it's 5 layers removed from anything I want to be thinking about in my day to day work.
show comments
anitil
I'm only on to chapter two and already it's explained some plumbing details that I somehow have missed all these years. This is great
show comments
normie3000
> LFS adds its own operational overhead.
Seemingly seconds on every remote-touching command, even on a very small repo.
show comments
snthpy
I've been wanting to ask this:
Why isn't
git clone --depth 1 ...
the default?
I would guess that for at least 90% of the repos I clone, I just want to install something. Even for the rest, I might hack on the code but seldom look into the history. If I do then I could do a `git fetch` at that point and save the bandwidth and disk space the rest of the time.
show comments
wadefletch
ted nyman: #1 most knowledgable college football fan in sf
and also git
which makes more sense i guess
show comments
aa-jv
I've always wanted to see a book that describes git for the common man and gives them tons of examples for how to use it to do productive things.
Even for a small office, git can be immensely useful. Entire production line workflows can be implemented with git .. if only folks would learn to use it productively.
Its not just for development. Writers can use it productively. Accountants too.
It always kind of irks me that Git hasn't just been folded into the OS front-end UI by any of the OS vendors .. it'd be so revolutionary to give common folks an easy way to manage the timeline/history of their computer use using git.
So nice to see this get picked up, and honestly surprised to see the interest in what I think of as an extremely esoteric area. Few things:
- Just released an Edition 1.1 that fixed some small errors, amended a few chapters content, and removed some general bluster. I'm going to try and, well, version these.
- New things are coming to Git, and I suspect I'll be talking about Git Futures or A Post-Git World soon enough.
- There's now a free PDF, https://gitperf.com/pdf.html
- I'll have a couple more highly practical chapters coming soon, focused on pragmatic organizational adoption, e.g., on wrapping the git CLI to best practices
I never faced git performance issues when working with code. Guess my repos weren't bit. But when I tried to use git as a versioned database of changes in my pet project, I learned a lot about indexes, compacting, etc. Article covers a lot and is very helpful!
Surprise, surprise, another piece of LLM-generated slop on the front page of HN.
From chapter 1:
> When Git slows down, engineers adapt in bad ways. They stop asking questions the history could answer. They batch work to avoid sync cost. They keep messy branches alive longer, postpone cleanup, and treat the repository like something slightly dangerous.
From https://gitperf.com/epilogue.html
> Once machines start producing code at machine cadence, the model from this book does not break. What changes is the pace: more branches, more commits, more automation, and more surrounding metadata. The traffic gets louder, and the features that keep Git legible under pressure move from "nice to have" to "essential."
> These stop looking like side optimizations. They are what keep machine-scale Git traffic usable.
Similarly, if not performance-focused, I can wholeheartedly recommend Building Git[0], which walks you through building your own git clone in Ruby (although the language is immaterial).
[0]: https://shop.jcoglan.com/building-git/
Git is industry standard, because for what it give you it's a remarkably robust and simple program to use. We're all vaguely aware that the internals are complex, but the UX is clean and usable enough that the complexity usually doesn't leak out.
But the day this breaks down and I have to deal with bloom filters, packfiles, maintaining the git garbage collector or rerere cleanup, is the day I switch our codebase to a centralized VCS.
This stuff is cool to learn about; but it's 5 layers removed from anything I want to be thinking about in my day to day work.
I'm only on to chapter two and already it's explained some plumbing details that I somehow have missed all these years. This is great
> LFS adds its own operational overhead.
Seemingly seconds on every remote-touching command, even on a very small repo.
I've been wanting to ask this:
Why isn't
the default?I would guess that for at least 90% of the repos I clone, I just want to install something. Even for the rest, I might hack on the code but seldom look into the history. If I do then I could do a `git fetch` at that point and save the bandwidth and disk space the rest of the time.
ted nyman: #1 most knowledgable college football fan in sf
and also git
which makes more sense i guess
I've always wanted to see a book that describes git for the common man and gives them tons of examples for how to use it to do productive things.
Even for a small office, git can be immensely useful. Entire production line workflows can be implemented with git .. if only folks would learn to use it productively.
Its not just for development. Writers can use it productively. Accountants too.
It always kind of irks me that Git hasn't just been folded into the OS front-end UI by any of the OS vendors .. it'd be so revolutionary to give common folks an easy way to manage the timeline/history of their computer use using git.
The text reads like an LLM was involved in this.