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Git Behind the Scenes ​

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Git Behind the Scenes ​

Git is a version control system that allows you to track changes to your files and folders. It is a powerful tool that can help you manage your code more effectively. In this section, we will explore the basics of how git works internally.

Git Snapshots ​

A git snapshot is a point in time in the history of your code. It represents a specific version of your code, including all the files and folders that were present at that time. Each snapshot is identified by a unique hash code, which is a string of characters that represents the contents of the snapshot.

A snapshot is not an image, it’s just a representation of the code at a specific point in time. Snapshot is a loose term that is used when git stores information about the code in a locally stored key-value based database. Everything is stored as an object and each object is identified by a unique hash code.

3 Musketeers of Git ​

The three musketeers of git are:

  • Commit Object
  • Tree Object
  • Blob Object

Commit Object ​

Each commit in the project is stored in .git folder in the form of a commit object. A commit object contains the following information:

  • Tree Object
  • Parent Commit Object
  • Author
  • Committer
  • Commit Message

Tree Object ​

Tree Object is a container for all the files and folders in the project. It contains the following information:

  • File Mode
  • File Name
  • File Hash
  • Parent Tree Object

Everything is stored as key-value pairs in the tree object. The key is the file name and the value is the file hash.

Blob Object ​

Blob Object is present in the tree object and contains the actual file content. This is the place where the file content is stored.

Helpful Commands ​

Here are some helpful commands that you can use to explore the git internals:

bash
git show -s --pretty=raw <commit-hash>

Grab tree id from the above command and use it in the following command to get the tree object:

bash
git ls-tree <tree-id>