So You Think You Know Git - FOSDEM 2024

So You Think You Know Git - FOSDEM 2024 on HackerTube: recommended by 1 Hacker News commenter across 1 month, 2024–2025.

GitButler

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Scott Chacon's FOSDEM 2024 talk on lesser-known Git tips and tricks: useful config settings, older and newer commands, monorepo and big-repo features, and recent GitHub additions. It closes with why he is now building GitButler, followed by a Q&A.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN commenters point to it as a well-regarded tour of newer, lesser-known Git features, and it is among the most-watched engineering talks of 2024.

people recommended it: 1
separate months: 1
strong recommendations: 0
discussed on HN: 2024–2025

“Great tech talk covering some of the newer lesser-known git features”
— craftkiller, Sep 2025, in “Show HN: Downloading a folder from a repo using rust”

What HN commenters said

4 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.

craftkillerSep 2025Recommends

You could do a blobless or treeless clone [link] Combined with --depth=1 and the --no-checkout / --sparse-checkout flow that the GP already described. I just tested on the emacs repo, left column is disk usage of just the `.git` folder inside: Shallow clones (depth=1): 124K: Treeless clone depth=1 with no-checkout 308K: Blobless clone depth=1 with no-checkout 12M: Treeless clone depth=1 sparse checkout of "doc" folder 12M: Blobless clone depth=1 sparse checkout of "doc" folder 53M: Treeless clone depth=1 non-sparse full checkout 53M: Blobless clone depth=1 non-sparse full checkout 53M: Regular clone with depth=1 Non-shallow clones: 54M: Treeless clone with no-checkout 124M: Blobless clone with no-checkout 65M: Treeless clone sparse checkout of "doc" folder 135M: Blobless clone sparse checkout of "doc" folder 107M: Treeless clone with non-sparse full checkout 177M: Blobless clone with non-sparse full checkout 653M: Full regular git clone with no flags Great tech talk covering some of the newer lesser-known git features: ▶ this video

in “Show HN: Downloading a folder from a repo using rust” · View on HN

pistoriuspFeb 2025Cites it

I know these are conferences that they track, but I happen to know the Scott's talk from FOSDEM titled "So You Think You Know Git?" is at 1.3m million views: ▶ this video

in “Most-Watched Software Engineering Talks of 2024” · View on HN

azangruJul 2024Cites it

> I'd say that perhaps Git is unsuitable above certain thresholds on numbers of files Scott Chacon in a recent talk about git[0] said that Microsoft uses git to version control Windows. They have ~3.5 million files in the repo, which is about 300 gigabytes in size. There are some tweaks to improve git performance in those scenarios; but still, I'd say it's a pretty impressive threshold. [0] - ▶ this video

in “Deno 1.45: Workspace and Monorepo Support” · View on HN

diarrheaFeb 2024Cites it

I remember watching your FOSDEM talk on YouTube, where you asked whether people have rerere turned on _and_ know what it is, in one question. I have it on, but only the faintest of clues what it is! Just git things, I suppose. ▶ this video

in “Git tips and tricks” · View on HN

Topics & tags

Testing, debugging & developer toolsgitconfigmonoreporererefosdemgitbutler