Understanding the Magic Behind Git: A Deep Dive into Git Internals

Git, a distributed version control system, has revolutionized the way developers collaborate on projects. But how does it actually work under the hood? While most developers and automation engineers are familiar with the basic commands, understanding Git’s internal architecture can help you troubleshoot issues and optimize workflows. Let’s dive into the core concepts and mechanisms that make Git such a powerful tool.

The Git Object Model: Blobs, Trees, and Commits

At the heart of Git’s architecture are three fundamental object types:

• Blobs (Binary Large Objects): These objects store individual files. Every version of every file is stored as a blob, identified by its SHA-1 hash. If a file’s contents remain the same across commits, the same blob is reused, ensuring the deduplication of identical files.
• Trees: Trees represent directories. They contain references to blobs and other trees, forming a hierarchical structure of the project’s files and directories.
• Commits: Commits are snapshots of the project at a particular point in time. A commit points to a tree object (the directory structure at the time of the commit) and contains metadata like author information, timestamps, commit messages, and parent…