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Comment by mdpopescu | Hacker News Reader

1. Install TortoiseGit 2. Use Visual Studio to commit (it automatically does "git add" with the new files you added to the project - I always forget to do this manually) 3. Use TortoiseGit to do "git push", because Visual Studio has a problem with ssh keys (or at least had a while ago and I didn't bother to check since) 4. When something breaks (and it will), google like crazy until you find a solution

There. I never needed more in a number of companies.

[Yes, somewhat tongue-in-cheek and of course limited to people who use Windows and Visual Studio, but I have discovered that's a significant number.]

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Yeah that's probably a good bare minimum amount of git knowledge. But I feel like that's making git which can be a super helpful and powerful tool nothing more than a means to an end.

Learning the functionality of git can really help you out. For example, I almost always use the `-p` flag (particularly `git add -p` which gives me a chance to manually see every change I've made, often I'll find some junk that I may have left somewhere else. Also being familiar with how to rebase series of commits onto and off of other branches can be a huge time saver.

> But I feel like that's making git which can be a super helpful and powerful tool nothing more than a means to an end.

It also feels like a clunkier workflow than just using git from the command line. It's probably easier to get started that way, but learning the basics of git from the command line isn't too hard.

TortoiseGIT always required me to check way too many boxes for each individual operation. Took me way longer than on the command line, where you just define one alias and you're good.

My biggest issues with git were when you were working in projects that had other usage patterns. It's a bit like C++, apparently everyone uses different subsets and strategies.

"...it automatically does "git add" with the new files you added to the project..."

Uh, yeah. You don't add random temporary files (notes, temporary testing data, the florist's phone number that you'll need after the meeting you're already late for) to your projects?

I want the notes in git. I never added temporary testing data (or the florist's phone number) to a project unless it was in code.

I've found the Visual Studio git integration to be not good with large solutions, just slows everything down. So I have it disabled in my projects.

What I do: I use GitHub desktop to get everything configured, then use the PowerShell command line to do all my work. Merge conflicts are fixed with VS Code.

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