Third edition · in progress

Everything you need to know about Git.

Pro Git takes you from your first git init to the internals of Git's object model. It's free to read, open source, and — with Git 3.0 on the horizon — being revised in the open for its third edition.

Licensed CC BY-NC-SA 3.0· 8 chapters, 3 appendices, 97 readable sections

Pro Git book cover

The Git 3.0 edition

Git 3.0 changes the defaults the book has taught for a decade: main as the default branch, SHA-256 object hashes, reftable ref storage, and a Rust build toolchain. The third edition revises every chapter to match — and the work happens in public.

Follow progress on the blog →

What's inside

  1. Getting Started8 sections
  2. Git Basics8 sections
  3. Git Branching8 sections
  4. Distributed Git5 sections
  5. Git Toolkit15 sections
  6. Customizing Git6 sections
  7. Git and Agents6 sections
  8. Git Servers10 sections
  9. Git at Scale8 sections
  10. Git Internals9 sections
  11. Appendix A: Git Commands11 sections

Latest from the blog

A new table of contents

The third edition's restructure has landed: two new chapters, a long-overdue worktrees section, and a few goodbyes. Here's the new shape of the book.

A new home on the web for Pro Git

The Pro Git project now has its own site: read the book online, search it, and follow progress on the third edition.

A progress page for the third edition

Every task the third edition needs, tracked in one hand-edited file and rendered as a live progress page on this site.

Sixteen years in print, and counting

First published in 2009 and rewritten in 2014, Pro Git has been the book behind git-scm.com/book and has been translated by volunteers into dozens of languages.

Read the history of the book →