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erinmgraham merged 2 commits into from
Jul 31, 2025
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Add explanation of git's name #1092

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Add explanation of git's name
christopherphan Jul 27, 2025
fe16b02
Add more info about origin of git and its name
christopherphan Jul 30, 2025
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8 changes: 8 additions & 0 deletions episodes/01-basics.md
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Expand Up @@ -76,6 +76,14 @@ are *distributed*, meaning that they do not need a centralized server to host th
These modern systems also include powerful merging tools that make it possible for multiple authors to work on
the same files concurrently.

Git was created by Linus Torvalds in 2005
as an alternative to BitKeeper, one of the first distributed version control
systems, to track changes in the Linux kernel.
Torvalds provided several explanations of the name, of varying degrees of
politeness, which are enumerated in the
[project's README](https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/README.md?plain=1#L55),
including "Global Information Tacker" for when "you're in a good mood".

For those interested, The Carpentries has a [Version Control with Mercurial](https://swcarpentry.github.io/hg-novice/) lesson (2013-2018), which provides additional context and historical perspective.
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