Made
Crystal ClearFor teams
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GitHub

Made Crystal Clear

A practical, visual guide to hosting code, reviewing pull requests, and shipping software

This guide separates git from GitHub on page one, then walks the whole professional loop: branches and pull requests, reviews that catch real problems, Actions workflows you can read line by line, releases, and the security you already have but never switched on. It closes with the two chapters other guides skip: getting your first contribution merged into a project you do not own, and building a profile that survives a sixty-second scan, with an honest answer about what that is worth.

Pages
266
Level
Beginner to advanced
Status
Available
Kindle · $12.99 ↗Paperback · $35.99 ↗Give feedback

Inside the book

  1. 01The GitHub moment
  2. 02Your first repository
  3. 03The GitHub flow: branch, pull request, merge
  4. 04Pull requests worth reviewing
  5. 05Reviewing code: a method, not a button tour
  6. 06How real teams work
  7. 07Guardrails: protection, owners, permissions
  8. 08Branching strategies that survive contact
  9. 09GitHub Actions: from mystery to model
  10. 10When the run goes red
  11. 11Ship it: releases, versioning and pages
  12. 12Security you already have
  13. 13Your first contribution to someone else's project
  14. 14Your profile, honestly
  15. 15What it costs, the cheat sheet, and what to learn next

You'll leave with

  • Tell git and GitHub apart, and always know where your file is
  • Run the GitHub flow: branch, pull request, review, merge, release
  • Write pull requests a busy reviewer says yes to, and review a fifty-file diff without losing your place

For teams

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One licence, every book in the series, one link for everyone. From $250 a year.

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Sources

Every source cited in GitHub Made Crystal Clear. Each number matches the [n] marker next to that link in the book's "Go deeper" lists, so you can trace any claim back to its origin.

  1. [1]About GitHub and Git (GitHub Docs)
  2. [2]About Git (GitHub Docs)
  3. [3]Hello World (GitHub Docs)
  4. [4]GitHub flow (GitHub Docs)
  5. [5]About repositories (GitHub Docs)
  6. [6]About large files on GitHub (GitHub Docs)
  7. [7]About authentication to GitHub (GitHub Docs)
  8. [8]About GitHub (github.com)
  9. [9]Creating an account on GitHub
  10. [10]About two-factor authentication
  11. [11]Generating a new SSH key and adding it to the ssh-agent
  12. [12]Set up Git
  13. [13]About READMEs
  14. [14]Basic writing and formatting syntax
  15. [15]Licensing a repository
  16. [16]About pull requests
  17. [17]About branches
  18. [18]About pull request merges
  19. [19]About merge conflicts
  20. [20]Resolving a merge conflict using the command line
  21. [21]Small CLs (Google Engineering Practices)
  22. [22]Speed of code reviews (Google Engineering Practices)
  23. [23]Best practices for peer code review (SmartBear, reporting the Cisco Systems study)
  24. [24]Linking a pull request to an issue (GitHub Docs)
  25. [25]About pull request reviews (GitHub Docs)
  26. [26]Do Small Code Changes Merge Faster? A Multi-Language Empirical Investigation
  27. [27]DORA: the four keys
  28. [28]gh pr create (GitHub CLI manual)
  29. [29]Filtering files in a pull request (GitHub Docs)
  30. [30]Managing a branch protection rule (GitHub Docs)
  31. [31]The standard of code review (Google Engineering Practices)
  32. [32]Using Copilot code review (GitHub Docs)
  33. [33]Copilot code review concepts (GitHub Docs)
  34. [34]Announcing the 2024 DORA report (Google Cloud)
  35. [35]About issues (GitHub Docs)
  36. [36]Setting guidelines for repository contributors (GitHub Docs)
  37. [37]Syntax for issue forms (GitHub Docs)
  38. [38]About Projects (GitHub Docs)
  39. [39]About teams (GitHub Docs)
  40. [40]Configuring notifications (GitHub Docs)
  41. [41]Showing your private contributions and achievements (GitHub Docs)
  42. [42]About protected branches
  43. [43]About rulesets
  44. [44]About code owners
  45. [45]Repository roles for an organization
  46. [46]GitHub's plans
  47. [47]GitHub pricing
  48. [48]GitHub Flow (Scott Chacon, 2011)
  49. [49]A successful Git branching model (Vincent Driessen, 2010)
  50. [50]Trunk Based Development
  51. [51]DORA capability: trunk-based development
  52. [52]DORA capability: continuous delivery
  53. [53]Continuous Integration (Martin Fowler, revised 18 January 2024)
  54. [54]Understanding GitHub Actions
  55. [55]Quickstart for GitHub Actions
  56. [56]Events that trigger workflows
  57. [57]Workflow syntax for GitHub Actions
  58. [58]Running variations of jobs in a workflow
  59. [59]Dependency caching reference
  60. [60]Using secrets in GitHub Actions
  61. [61]Automatic token authentication
  62. [62]GitHub Actions limits
  63. [63]GitHub Status
  64. [64]GitHub Status incident history
  65. [65]GitHub-hosted runners reference (GitHub docs)
  66. [66]Billing for GitHub Actions (GitHub docs)
  67. [67]Actions runner pricing (GitHub docs)
  68. [68]Understanding and Detecting Flaky Builds in GitHub Actions
  69. [69]About releases (GitHub Docs)
  70. [70]Semantic Versioning 2.0.0
  71. [71]Conventional Commits 1.0.0
  72. [72]How to Write a Git Commit Message (Chris Beams)
  73. [73]Deployments and environments (GitHub Docs)
  74. [74]What is GitHub Pages? (GitHub Docs)
  75. [75]Using custom workflows with GitHub Pages (GitHub Docs)
  76. [76]Introduction to GitHub Packages (GitHub Docs)
  77. [77]GitHub security features
  78. [78]About the dependency graph
  79. [79]About Dependabot alerts
  80. [80]About Dependabot version updates
  81. [81]About secret scanning
  82. [82]About push protection
  83. [83]About forks
  84. [84]About code scanning with CodeQL
  85. [85]Billing for GitHub Advanced Security
  86. [86]Open Source Guides: How to Contribute
  87. [87]Open Source Guides: Best Practices for Maintainers
  88. [88]Searching for repositories (GitHub Docs)
  89. [89]AI Policy, Disclosure, and Human in the Loop: How Are Contribution Guidelines Adapting to GenAI?
  90. [90]Open source AI contribution policies (melissawm)
  91. [91]About GitHub CLI (GitHub Docs)
  92. [92]About your profile (GitHub Docs)
  93. [93]Pinning items to your profile (GitHub Docs)
  94. [94]Using your GitHub profile to enhance your resume (GitHub Docs)
  95. [95]Saving repositories with stars (GitHub Docs)
  96. [96]Understanding GitHub code search syntax (GitHub Docs)
  97. [97]GitHub Actions pricing calculator
  98. [98]GitHub security plans
  99. [99]GitHub Copilot plans (GitHub Docs)
  100. [100]State of CI/CD Report (CD Foundation and SlashData)
  101. [101]GitHub (Wikipedia)
  102. [102]Octoverse 2024 (GitHub blog)

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