What it is
Git records the history of a project’s files. Each commit is a snapshot you can go back to, compare or undo, and branches let you work on several changes at once and merge them when they’re ready. It’s distributed: every copy of a repository has the full history, and you share work by pushing and pulling between copies, often through GitHub, GitLab or Gitea.
Why it’s here
- The standard. Nearly every open-source and commercial project uses it.
- Safe experiments. Branch, try something, and throw it away if it doesn’t work.
- Needed by everything else. Editors, AI agents and installers all use Git.
On CoreDesktop
Git is installed from pacman. CoreDesktop adds shell shortcuts for it:
gforgit, andlgfor lazygitgcm "message"commits with a message,gcam "message"commits all changed files, andgcadadds changed files to the last commitga <branch>creates a worktree for a new branch next to the current repository, in../<repo>--<branch>, and moves you into it;gd, run inside it, removes the worktree and its branch
update keeps Git current with the rest of the pacman packages.