Drew, Thanks for responding to my email! Yes, I did read most of the Book, although I admit that I skimmed over some of the more technical parts. There is still a key part of how git is used in a commercial environment which I don't understand. When we release a new version of our product, it is comprised of over a hundred files. Some of these files have not changed for years, and some have been revised/fixed/updated quite recently. But what is key is that all of these components have passed a review and testing process. A very important piece of information is what revision of each file made it into the release. I know that git takes snapshots of the repository as changes are made and that it is possible to reconstruct the file set at any point in time. But unless rules or conventions are established, at any time the repository can contain files which are in the process of being modified and thus have not passed the testing process. For the purpose of planning a release, we're interested only in the "most recently tested and approved" files. For the sake of argument, I'll assume that a committing a change implies that the file has passed the testing process. So my questions are: 1) Does git have a built-in way to get a list of all of the "most recently committed" files only at a given point in time, thus automatically recording the revisions of all of the component files of a release? This implies that for files which are being modified or which have been staged but not committed, that git would go back to find the "predecessor" file which had been committed. 2) Does git have a way of creating and exporting a list of the "most recently committed" files only? 3) If the answer to the above questions is "No", then what is the normal way for a programming shop which is using git to extract/assemble the list of approved files for building a release? Thank you. Jim Vahl -----Original Message----- From: Drew Northup [mailto:drew.northup@xxxxxxxxx] Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2012 12:37 PM To: Jim Vahl Cc: git@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; 'Skot Davis' Subject: Re: A basic question On Wed, 2012-10-10 at 11:03 -0700, Jim Vahl wrote: > All, > > Our company is researching version control software, something which > we have not used previously. I have a very basic question about git > which I have not been able to answer from reading. As I understand > it, a git repository can be a mixture of files which are under development, staged or committed. > If we make a new build of our product we will obviously only want to > include the committed (tested) files. > > The question is this: what is the usual procedure to retrieve a set of > committed files only from the repository to place into a distribution > or "ready to build" folder. The same question goes for tagging a > release: how does the user get the tag to reference the committed > files only and not the most recent files which may be under development or undergoing testing. > > Thanks, > > Jim Vahl Jim, Have you looked at http://git-scm.com/book yet? It sounds to me like you have some misconceptions about how Git works. (If so, did it leave you more or less confused?) -- -Drew Northup ________________________________________________ "As opposed to vegetable or mineral error?" -John Pescatore, SANS NewsBites Vol. 12 Num. 59 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html