Commit Often, Perfect Later, Publish Once: Git Best Practices

Best Practices vary from environment to environment, and there is no One True Answer, but still, this represents a consensus from #git and in some cases helps you frame the discussion for the generation of your very own best practices.

Table of Contents

• Do read about git
• Do commit early and often
• Don’t panic
• Do backups
• Don’t change published history
• Do choose a workflow
• Do divide work into repositories
• Do make useful commit messages
• On Sausage Making
• Do keep up to date
• Do periodic maintenance
• Do enforce Standards
• Useful Tools
• Do integrate with external tools
• Miscellaneous “Do”s
• Miscellaneous “Don’t”s
• Copyright
• Thanks
• Comments

Do read about git

Knowing where to look is half the battle. I strongly urge everyone to read (and support) the Pro Git book. The other resources are highly recommended by various people as well.

• Pro Git
• Git for Computer Scientists and a different/updated version
• Git from the Bottom Up
• The Git Parable
• Other resources
• Git wiki

Imported from Seth Robertson's original.

Thanks

Thanks to the experts on #git, and my co-workers, for review, feedback, and ideas.