This is the most important thing to understand Git!
You must:
  • be able to visualize the commit tree
  • understand how each git command modifies the commit DAG
But not every directed acyclic graph is a tree.
Example of a tree (and therefore also a DAG):
5
|
4 7
| |
3 6
|/
2
|
1
Convention in this presentation: arrows implicitly point up, just like in a git log, i.e.:
  • 1 is parent of 2
  • 2 is parent of 3 and 6
  • 3 is parent of 4
and so on.
Example of a DAG that is not a tree:
7
|\
4 6
| |
3 5
|/
2
|
1
This is not a tree because there are two ways to reach 7:
But we often say "tree" intead of "DAG" in the context of Git because DAG sounds ugly.
Example of a graph that is not a DAG:
6
^
|
3->4
^  |
|  v
2<-5
^
|
1
This one is not acyclic because there is a cycle 2, 3, 4, 5, 2.
Because a Git commit can have more than 1 parent due to merge commits when you do:
git merge
It can even have more than 2, there's no limit. Although that is not so common (with good reason, 2 is already one too many): softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/314215/can-a-git-commit-have-more-than-2-parents/377903#377903
There are two ways to organize a project:
Some people like merges, but they are ugly and stupid. Rebase instead and keep linear history.
Linear history:
5 master
|
4
|
3
|
2
|
1 first commit
Branched history:
7   master
|\
| \
6  \
|\  \
| |  |
3 4  5
| |  |
| /  /
|/  /
2  /
| /
1/  first commit
Here commits 6 and 7 are the so called "merge commits":
  • they have multiple parents:
    • 6 has parents 3 and 4
    • 7 has parents 5 and 6
  • they are useless and don't contain any real information
Which type of tree do you think will be easier to understand and maintain?
????
????????????
You may disconnect now if you still like branched history.
Generate a minimal test repo. You should get in the habit of doing this to test stuff out.
#!/usr/bin/env bash

mkdir git-tips
cd git-tips
git init

for i in 1 2 3 4 5; do
  echo $i > f
  git add f
  git commit -m $i
done

git checkout HEAD~2
git checkout -b my-feature

for i in 6 7; do
  echo $i > f
  git add f
  git commit -m $i
done
Option 1) git commit. Doh!!!
Option 2) git rebase. Basically allows you to do arbitrary modifications to the tree. The most important ones are:
Oh but there are usually 2 trees: local and remote.
So you also have to learn how to observe and modify and sync with the remote tree!
But basically:
git fetch
to update the remote tree. And then you can use it exactly like any other branch, except you prefix them with the remote (usually origin/*), e.g.:
  • origin/master is the latest fetch of the remote version of master
  • origin/my-feature is the latest fetch of the remote version of my-feature
gitk by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Figure 1.
gitk 2.34.1 running on Ubuntu 22.04 with a simple repository.
GDB reverse debugging by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
The best open source implementation as of 2020 seems to be: Mozilla rr.

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