Write a Git Client from Scratch

2:40pm - 3:10pm on Saturday, October 6 in Madison

James Powell

Audience Level:

Intermediate

Watch:

https://youtu.be/xvzo_nV9PjU

Overview

What better way to learn the fundamentals of git than to reimplement them yourself? In this talk, we will (hurridly) cover the theory behind git and build a minimal git client in Python from scratch without anything but the standard library and our wits! 100% live coded. Accept no substitutes.

Description

git is a powerful tool with a confusing interface. Many struggle with commands beyond git add, git commit, git pull, and git push, because the underlying model for git is poorly communicated. But once a user has a thorough understanding of git internals, the reasoning behind its (admittedly rough) interface becomes much clearer, and the path to mastery becomes clear.

Rather than present the internals of git through dry explanation, this talk explains the internals of git through live coding and live interaction with a git repo. Our goal: to write a minimal git client from scratch without the help of any “heavy” libraries like libgit2. Instead, we’ll cover the contents of ./.git, how to interact with them, the “theory” behind git (e.g., what does it mean that git is an immutable, content-addressible store?), and slowly develop a tool to do basic git operations.