Peepcode Git Book April 28

Filed under programming, git by Scott | 3 comments

I’ve been wanting to write a book on Git for a while now - at least since the beginning of the year. I really wanted to take the time to write out a book that taught Git the way I wish I had been taught - describe the internals first, what Git is really doing, rather than comparing it to SVN or just showing random commands without context.

I laid it all out and started writing, but it’s really hard to justify the untold hours it takes to finish it if you’re not sure anyone will even read it. So, about a month and a half ago, after a few false starts, I asked Geoffrey Grosenbach if Peepcode would be interested in publishing a mini-book on Git - it seemed to be getting more popular (remember, this was before GitHub or Rails moving to Git) and he was enthusiastic. So, off I went, and just a few minutes ago the Peepcode Git PDF product page went live:




This is actually only half of the book that I laid out - about halfway in it became clear that this is way too much for one mini-book, so I will be coming out with a follow-up book on “Advanced Git” hopefully sometime in the next few months.

In addition to the PDF, I also produced 8 short (5-15 min) screencasts that are associated with several of the chapters - you can download them all when you buy the book and there are sidebars in the text that point you to which episode demonstrates the contents of that section. Also, I am working on an audio-book version in case you want to review the content on your commute - that should be available this weekend.

I originally intended this content to be free, but not having something on the line would never have gotten me to actually do it, nor would the final product have been nearly so polished. I’m really glad I went with Peepcode - I think the $9 is worth the quality that the Peepcode production added to it. I hope you agree. Let me know what you think!

3 comments

  1. Marcus Wyatt Apr 28

    Great, I’ve ordered the book and will have a look tonight. I’ve enjoyed your video you’ve released previously about Git, so I’m sure the book would be just what I need to get a deeper understanding of Git.

    Cheers,
    Marcus

  2. Mirko Apr 28

    Excellent news! I’ve been waiting for a Git book to be released, and your Peepcode book sounds perfect. I’ll purchase and download it tomorrow morning. Thanks!

  3. James Apr 29

    I just finished reading through it, thanks.

    It was refreshing to read about git from the bottom up, and not compared to SVN. I was at the stage where I could do most of the basic tasks I used to do in SVN, but lacked a fundamental understanding of how it was working under the hood (indexes, objects, pack files, etc).

    Understanding all those concepts really helped me grok why the higher level commands and workflows work the way they do, and how to avoid some of the pitfalls.

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