Git for Advanced Users

Git has become the universal standard for tracking code changes, and mastering it enables developers to confidently experiment, recover mistakes, trace the origin of bugs, and collaborate without overwriting each other’s work. This course explains how Git works on a more fundamental level than our introductory course: how Git history is structured, how to take advantage of it in practice, and how to organize it well. Git offers many features that entry level users may not know or are hard to get a grasp of. Therefore this course is not just about the ‘how’, but also about the ‘why’, and how to find the right balance of effort when doing version control with Git.

While the course will cover certain fundamentals of Git, it will do so with more attention for detail. Thus participants should already have some familiarity with the basic Git workflow. Usage of the command line is mandatory for this course.

Level: Intermediate

Language: English (German upon request for bespoke courses)

Price and Eligibility: Refer to the registration page for each event (generally free of charge for members of academia from Europe).

Knowledge

  • Familiarity with the Linux command line and basic Git command line usage
  • Familiarity with any text editor

Technical

After completing this course, you will be able to:

  • Explain why good bookkeeping matters
  • Correct mistakes and edit and already existing history
  • Restore accidentally deleted branches and commits
  • How to partially commit changes
  • Working with multiple remotes and how to copy repositories
  • How to balance the effort spent on version control

  • Git history recap and investigation (show, blame, bisect)
  • Editing history, and correcting errors (rebase, amend commit, revert)
  • Restoring deleted commits and branches (reflog)
  • Dealing with conflicts
  • Staging area (index)
  • Working with multiple remotes
  • Best practices and balancing effort spent on version control

  • 2026, Nov 4-5: two half-day online course in collaboration with NHR@KIT (Register)

For an overview of all NHR@FAU courses, visit the course overview page.