If you’ve read my previous posts on the git revision control system, you know that I like it very much. (It’s almost the best thing since sliced bread 😛 ) However, there is one add-on for it which I could never quite figure out the utility of… StGIT.
Well, I finally got around to asking the guys in #git @ FreeNode and now I know… it’s main beneficial application is in managing patches against a moving target. Or, as the summary for “quilt” (an older standalone tool with a similar purpose) says, The key philosophical concept is that your primary output is patches. Not “.c” files, not “.h” files. But patches.
I see it as being incredibly useful as an aid to developing against projects for which you only have read-only/public repository access… including the thousands which are managed by Subversion or CVS. Run `git help svn` and `git help cvsimport` for details. As for StGIT itself, there’s a crash course on the git website.
Why StGIT? by Stephan Sokolow is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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