Git Fundamentals and Design Overview

Git as distributed version control system

Git is a distributed version control system used to manage versions of source code (and other data) during collaborative development. Unlike traditional client–server systems, Git keeps a full local copy of the repository—including its history—on each developer’s computer, so work can continue independently of network access or a central server. Changes can be synchronized between repositories that share history, and while all repositories are peers, teams often use a central server to host an integrated copy. Git was created by Linus Torvalds in 2005 for the Linux kernel and was designed with goals such as speed, data integrity, and support for distributed, non-linear workflows with many parallel branches. Its design emphasizes lightweight branching (a branch is essentially a reference to a commit), efficient handling of large projects, and cryptographic protection of history (commit identifiers depend on the full prior history). Git also provides multiple merge strategies and uses snapshot-based data structures, where directory trees are recorded as snapshots rather than tracking file-level revision relationships explicitly.

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Local repository and history independence

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