Here's a preview from my zine, How Git Works! If you want to see more comics like this, sign up for my saturday comics newsletter or browse more comics!
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you can see for yourself how git is storing your files!
You just need one command: git cat-file -p
First, get a commit ID. You can get one from git log
1. read the commit
git cat-file -p 3530a4
tree 22b920
parent 56cfdc
author Julia 1697682215 -0500
committer Julia 1697682215 -0500
commit message goes here
22b920 is the directory ID
I just use git cat-file for fun and learning, never to get things done
2. read the directory
$ git cat-file -p 22b920
100644 blob 4fffb2 .gitignore
100644 blob e351d9 404.html
100644 blob cab416 Cargo.toml
100644 blob fe442d hello.html
040000 tree 9de29f src
(fe442d is a file ID)
(IDs are actually 40 characters)
3. read a file
$ git cat-file -p fe442d
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en"
<body>
<h1>Hello!</h1>
</body>
</html></p>
4. and we’re done!
fe442d is the sha1 hash of the contents of the file. It’s called a “blob id”. Commit and tree IDs re hashes too.
Using a hash to identify each file is how git avoids duplication: if the file’s contents don’t change, the hash won’t change, so git doesn’t need to store a new version!
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