foundation

Git basics

Understand commits, branches, merges, rebases, cherry-picks, stashes, tags, and remotes as operations on a commit graph.

Git basics interviews test the commit-graph model: snapshots, branch pointers, merging and replaying history, and synchronizing with remotes. Everything else in Git builds on these primitives.

Subtopics: commit, branch, merge, rebase, cherry-pick, stash, tag, remote.

On interviews: draw how a branch points to a commit, explain fast-forward vs merge commit, why rebase changes hashes, and fetch vs pull vs push.

Common pitfalls: thinking branches copy files; merge without understanding two-parent commits; rebase on shared branches without coordination.

The trade-off is linear history (rebase) versus preserved integration topology (merge) on the path to shared main.

Checklist:

Explain commits as immutable snapshots with parents.
Treat branches as movable refs.
Compare merge and rebase outcomes on a diagram.
Fetch before reasoning about remote state.