Git and GitHub Course

Lesson 1 • What Version Control Solves

Covers the problems of manual file versioning, collaboration conflicts, and history loss. Sets the motivation for adopting a formal version control system.

Lesson 2 • Installing and Configuring Git

Guides installation on major operating systems and sets identity, editor, and line-ending preferences. Proper configuration prevents common errors in later workflows.

Lesson 3 • Initialising Your First Repository

Demonstrates git init and git clone to create local repositories. Students gain hands-on confidence before tackling commits and branching.

Lesson 1 • Creating and Inspecting Commits

Covers git commit syntax, message conventions, and the anatomy of a commit object. Good messages are the foundation of a navigable project history.

Lesson 2 • Staging Files for Commit

Teaches git add in all its forms to move changes into the staging area. Selective staging enables precise, atomic commits covered later in the section.

Lesson 3 • Undoing Changes Safely

Distinguishes git restore, git revert, and git reset to undo work at different stages. Understanding scope prevents accidental data loss.

Lesson 4 • Viewing Project History

Explores git log flags to filter, format, and search commit history. Students learn to extract meaningful information from any repository's timeline.

Lesson 1 • Understanding Branches in Git

Explains branches as lightweight pointers to commits and HEAD as the current position. This mental model makes all branch operations intuitive.

Lesson 2 • Rebasing for a Linear History

Introduces git rebase as an alternative to merging that produces a linear commit history. Students learn when rebase is appropriate and when it is dangerous.

Lesson 3 • Merging Branches

Demonstrates fast-forward and three-way merges and when each applies. Merge commit messages and history shape are examined for readability.

Lesson 4 • Resolving Merge Conflicts

Teaches conflict markers, manual resolution, and tool-assisted resolution workflows. Conflict resolution is a critical skill for any collaborative project.

Lesson 1 • Managing Remote Branches

Explains listing, tracking, and deleting remote branches and pruning stale references. Clean remote branch management keeps team repositories organised.

Lesson 2 • Pushing Changes to a Remote

Covers git push syntax, force-push risks, and setting upstream branches. Students publish work safely and understand push rejection causes.

Lesson 3 • Fetching and Pulling Updates

Distinguishes git fetch from git pull and explains when each is safer. Students avoid overwriting local work by choosing the right synchronisation command.

Lesson 1 • GitHub Account and Repository Setup

Walks through account creation, SSH key authentication, and creating a remote repository. Secure authentication is established before any remote operations.

Lesson 2 • Opening and Managing Pull Requests

Covers creating pull requests, writing descriptions, and linking issues. Pull requests are the primary collaboration unit on GitHub.

Lesson 3 • Forking and Cloning Projects

Explains the fork model for contributing to projects you do not own. Students clone forks and configure upstream remotes for syncing.

Lesson 4 • Reviewing and Merging Pull Requests

Teaches inline comments, review approvals, and merge strategies available on GitHub. Students apply review etiquette that improves team code quality.

Lesson 1 • Gitflow Workflow

Introduces the main, develop, feature, release, and hotfix branch structure of Gitflow. Students map release cycles to the appropriate branch types.

Lesson 2 • Choosing the Right Workflow

Provides a decision framework based on team size, release frequency, and deployment model. Students justify workflow choices with concrete criteria.

Lesson 3 • Forking Workflow for Open Source

Adapts the fork-and-pull-request model for open-source contribution at scale. Students contribute to projects without write access to the main repository.

Lesson 4 • Trunk-Based Development

Presents short-lived branches and frequent integration to the main branch as an alternative to Gitflow. Students evaluate trade-offs for fast-moving teams.

Lesson 1 • Rewriting History with Interactive Rebase

Applies interactive rebase to reorder, edit, squash, and drop commits before sharing. Clean history reduces review burden and improves long-term maintainability.

Lesson 2 • Stashing Work in Progress

Covers git stash to temporarily shelve uncommitted changes and restore them later. Stashing enables clean branch switches without premature commits.

Lesson 3 • Cherry-Picking Specific Commits

Demonstrates applying individual commits from one branch to another with git cherry-pick. Students use cherry-pick for targeted hotfixes and backports.

Lesson 4 • Using the Reflog for Recovery

Shows how git reflog records every HEAD movement to recover lost commits. Students restore accidentally deleted branches and reset-gone commits.

Lesson 1 • Writing Your First Workflow

Guides creation of a workflow file that runs tests on every push and pull request. Students validate the workflow through GitHub's Actions tab.

Lesson 2 • GitHub Actions Core Concepts

Defines workflows, jobs, steps, runners, and events as the building blocks of automation. A clear mental model prevents misconfiguration in later exercises.

Lesson 3 • Deploying with GitHub Actions

Builds a deployment job that publishes to a hosting environment after tests pass. Students implement environment protection rules and manual approval gates.

Lesson 4 • Using Marketplace Actions

Demonstrates referencing community actions for checkout, language setup, and artefact upload. Reusing verified actions accelerates pipeline development.