Git for Beginners
by Sergey Okinchuk
Staying In SyncThe Shape of a Team Workflow

Chapter Eight · Collaboration

Working With Other People

Theo arrives. Nothing here is new Git — it is Chapters 6 and 7 with a website and a second person in the middle: the team loop, pull requests, code review from both sides, merging, and the issues that start most real work.

5 topics

Theo has cloned Sandpiper and wants to add photographs to the sightings page. From here on, two people are changing the same project.

Almost nothing in this chapter is new Git. The team workflow is Chapter 6's branch-commit-merge loop with Chapter 7's push in the middle and a website wrapped around it. What is genuinely new is social rather than technical: a change gets read by someone else before it becomes part of the project.

Five topics. The shape of the loop, so you can see how little of it is unfamiliar. Opening a pull request, which is mostly an exercise in writing a description someone can act on. Review, from both sides, which is where beginners learn fastest and feel worst. Merging, and the two cleanup steps people forget. And issues, which is where most real work on GitHub starts.

The team loop — and how much of it you already know
Branch and commitChapters 6 and 2
→
PushChapter 7
→
Pull requestnew
→
Review and mergenew, then Chapter 6

Topics in This Chapter

Topic 33
The Shape of a Team Workflow
Seven steps, all of them things you already know, and the reason work does not go straight into main even on a two-person project.
Collaboration
Topic 34
Opening a Pull Request
Turning a pushed branch into a proposal. Most of the work is writing a description a reviewer can actually act on.
Collaboration
Topic 35
Being Reviewed, and Reviewing Others
Where beginners learn fastest and feel worst. Both halves are skills: reading someone's change usefully, and taking comments on your own.
Collaboration
Topic 36
Merging a Pull Request
GitHub performs the merge from Chapter 6 on its own copy — which leaves two cleanup steps and one laptop that does not know yet.
Collaboration
Topic 37
Issues and Keeping Track of Work
A written note that something should change, costing a minute and surviving the conversation that produced it. Where most real work on GitHub starts.
Collaboration