Git Best Practices: A Comprehensive Guide

This article presents Git best practices based on over 20 years of version control experience and more than 10 years of Git-specific expertise.

What Git Is: Git is a distributed version control system that tracks directory modifications with a non-linear workflow. Each Git directory on each machine is a complete repository containing full history and version tracking capabilities. Unlike master-slave systems, there is no central server role—all repositories are equal endpoints.

What Git Is Not: GitHub, GitLab, Fork, and Merge/Pull Requests are not part of Git itself—they are services and workflows built around Git. Understanding this distinction is crucial for proper Git usage.

Tool Selection: The author recommends TortoiseGit for Windows as the best GUI tool, as it integrates with Windows Explorer and provides a visual branch graph viewer essential for understanding Git's non-linear workflow.

Branch Strategy: The article covers main/develop branches for stability, team-specific develop branches for large projects, and short-lived feature branches for individual features. Feature branches should be created frequently, worked on, merged, and deleted.

Merge vs Rebase: The author explains these as two dimensions: merge preserves branch structure while rebase reapplies commits. For feature branches, squash + rebase is recommended as the most efficient approach. The workflow should be: commit/amend during development, squash to one commit before MR, continue amend during MR iteration, and rebase after MR approval.

Conflict Resolution: Best practice is to rebase feature branch onto target branch, resolve conflicts, then force push—avoiding creating new branches for conflict resolution.

Pull vs Fetch: Instead of pull, use fetch + rebase to avoid unnecessary merges. Manual fetch gets all branches, allowing better control.

Commit Principles: Commits should be small and complete (atomic). Avoid combining multiple features in one commit or having incomplete commits that require other commits to be useful.

LFS Usage: Git LFS handles large binary files but requires explicit configuration in .gitattributes before adding large files. The author provides tips on proper LFS usage and avoiding abuse.

Git's Limitations: Git lacks built-in branch permission management and can have performance issues with massive repositories. Solutions like partial clone, sparse checkout, and tools like Microsoft's VFSForGit (now Scalar) address these issues for large projects.