Version Control and Team Collaboration with Git

Azure DevOps vs GitHub

Azure DevOps is the collaboration hub offered by Microsoft for everyone in the development team, including project managers, testers, architects, developers and end-users. Likewise, GitHub is used mainly for open source projects.

• Introduction to Azure DevOps
• Using GitHub
• LAB: Creating and configuring your project

Using Git

Source code is the most valuable asset of any software project. To manage it effectively, you need a robust system to track changes, collaborate across teams, and maintain a historical record of your work. Azure Repos provides full support for Git, the most popular version control system. In this section, we cover the essential Git workflows for managing your source history.

• Version Control concepts
• Distributed Source Control with Git
• Git Clients: Command Line, Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code
• Creating a local repository
• Configuring your Git repository
• Checking the status of your repo
• Staging files
• Committing files
• Comparing changes in files
• Reverting commits
• LAB: Working with a local repository

Team collaboration with remote repositories

Multiple developers working on the same code base requires a central place for all your team's code and changes. In Git these are known as remote repositories. Here we discuss team collaboration with Git.

• Team collaboration with remote repositories
• Cloning a remote repository
• Synchronizing with a remote repository
• Resolving conflicts
• LAB: Working with remote repositories

Working in isolation with branches

How can we avoid code changes from one developer interfering with code from others? Branching has always been used to allow developers to complete their changes before integrating them with others.

• Adding branches to your workflow
• Branching Strategies - Using GitFlow
• Merge vs. Rebase - keeping a linear history
• Managing your branches
• LAB: Working with branches in Git

Team Collaboration with Pull Requests

Collaborating on a shared codebase requires a unified approach to quality. Pull Requests serve as a gatekeeping mechanism, allowing the team to review code for correctness, architectural consistency, adherence to SOLID principles, and overall maintainability before it reaches production.

• Protecting your branches with Pull Requests
• Ensuring high quality code with Pull Requests
• Merge Strategies: Merge, Squash Merge, Rebase
• Versioning with Git Tags
• Using Forks
• LAB: Team collaboration with Pull Requests

Git Recipes

A collection of specialized techniques for optimizing your workflow, fixing common mistakes, and managing complex repository states.

• Git Worktrees for managing multiple checkouts
• Stashing changes for quick context switching
• Git Cherry-Pick to apply specific commits
• Interactive Rebase for cleaning commit history
• Git Reflog to recover lost commits or branches
• Git Hooks for workflow automation
• Custom Aliases for personalized commands
• Git Bisect for automated bug hunting
• Removing Secrets and sensitive data from history
• Global .gitignore for cleaner environments