learning-tracker

🌳 Advanced Git Mastery Roadmap

This roadmap is designed for developers who already know basic Git commands (clone, commit, push, pull, branch, merge) and want to master Git for team collaboration, open-source contributions, and large-scale software projects.

It covers intermediate to advanced Git concepts, best practices, workflows, and real-world exercises.

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📍 Phase 1: Strengthen Git Fundamentals (Intermediate → Advanced)

🎯 Goal: Move beyond basic Git usage and understand how Git really works under the hood.

Topics

• Git Internals
  • How Git stores data (objects, trees, commits, refs)
  • The .git folder structure
  • Staging area vs working directory vs repository
• Branching & Merging
  • Fast-forward vs recursive merges
  • Merge conflicts and resolution strategies
• Git Logs & History
  • git log with advanced formatting
  • git show, git diff, git blame
• Reset, Revert, and Checkout
  • Soft vs mixed vs hard resets
  • When to use revert instead of reset

Recommended Resources

• Books
  • Pro Git – Scott Chacon & Ben Straub (free online)
• Practice Projects
  • Create a repo, simulate conflicts, and resolve them
  • Practice resetting commits safely
  • Explore .git/objects manually

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⚡ Phase 2: Advanced Git Techniques

🎯 Goal: Learn advanced branching, rewriting history, and debugging.

Topics

• Rebasing
  • Interactive rebase (git rebase -i)
  • Squashing & reordering commits
  • Fixing up messy commit history
• Cherry-Picking
  • Applying commits across branches
• Stashing
  • Managing WIP changes (git stash, git stash pop)
• Advanced Diff & Patch
  • git apply and patch files
• Debugging with Git
  • git bisect for bug hunting
  • git blame with context

Recommended Resources

• Tutorials
  • Atlassian Git Tutorials
• Practice Projects
  • Rewrite a messy commit history into clean commits
  • Use git bisect to locate a buggy commit
  • Simulate hotfix cherry-pick from production branch

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🌐 Phase 3: Team Collaboration & Workflows

🎯 Goal: Master Git in collaborative, team, and open-source environments.

Topics

• Collaboration Basics
  • Pull requests (PRs) and code reviews
  • Forking workflows for open-source projects
• Branching Models
  • Git Flow, GitHub Flow, Trunk-Based Development
• Tags & Releases
  • Lightweight vs annotated tags
  • Release versioning strategies
• Submodules & Monorepos
  • Adding and updating submodules
  • Pros/cons of submodules vs monorepo

Recommended Resources

• Book
  • Git Pocket Guide – Richard Silverman
• Practice Projects
  • Simulate Git Flow in a demo project
  • Create annotated tags for release versions
  • Fork and contribute to an open-source project

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🏆 Phase 4: Advanced Git Power User

🎯 Goal: Become an expert capable of handling complex repositories, large-scale projects, and custom Git tooling.

Topics

• Hooks & Automation
  • Client-side hooks (pre-commit, pre-push)
  • Server-side hooks for CI/CD pipelines
• Large Scale Repos
  • Git LFS (Large File Storage)
  • Handling monorepos efficiently
• Security & Policies
  • Signing commits with GPG
  • Enforcing commit message standards
• Customization
  • Git aliases for productivity
  • Custom merge strategies

Recommended Resources

• Books
  • Mastering Git – Jakub Narębski
• Practice Projects
  • Configure commit signing with GPG
  • Set up Git hooks for linting before commits
  • Experiment with Git LFS for large datasets

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💡 General Tips

• Use git status often to avoid mistakes.
• Prefer rebasing before merging in feature branches for clean history.
• Use git reflog as a “safety net” for recovering lost commits.
• Write meaningful commit messages (follow Conventional Commits).
• Practice on toy repositories before applying advanced techniques to production.

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Happy Versioning! 🎉

“Git is not just a tool for saving code — it’s a tool for mastering collaboration.”