Most organisations with a collaborative wiki have some sort of "tips and tricks" page, where users can freely add or update advice for everyone to use. It appears the CIA is no different, with the recent "Vault 7" dump from WikiLeaks revealing the US intelligence service's closely guarded collection of Git cheats. What's surprising is a few are actually useful.

For small-medium software companies, scaling is usually not a problem. Microsoft, however, doesn't have that luxury. For instance, the developer is an enthusiastic user of Git, with many of its projects available on GitHub including .NET Core, the Chakra Javascript engine and Visual Studio Code. When it comes to the Windows source... Git doesn't scale and so, Microsoft was forced to create its own virtual file system for Git -- which it's just open-sourced -- to streamline repo operations.

Why can't fixing problems with Git commits be fun? OK, fixing commits for any source control system can get hairy from time to time, but Git certainly makes the process more mystical than one would like. So how about a choose your own adventure to walk you through common Git snafus?

New GitHub features are always welcome, though some a certainly more useful than others. On the "less handy" end of the spectrum is the recent addition of file uploading via the browser to your GitHub-hosted repositories.

Writing concise, yet descriptive commit messages for version control is a difficult art to perfect. While you're on the path of getting those notes down to their efficient best, here are a few questions to ask yourself before doing that push.

Codecademy just launched a new course that will teach you how to use the version control application Git. In the free two-hour course, you'll learn how to create and manage a project with Git.

Last year we pointed you in the direction of a cheat sheet for Git, the robust, yet somewhat intimidating version control system that has many uses outside of software projects. If you're still not comfortable giving it a try, there are a number of online resources that allow you to get your hands dirty without even touching a real command line.

For the less diligent, the wisdom of making regular backups only coalesces once you lose important data in spectacular, unrecoverable fashion. There are a bunch of software options for duplicating and safe-guarding your important information, but what mechanism is best? Usually the domain of software developers, source control software, such as SVN and Git, is well-suited for regular documents and even binaries. So why aren't you using it?

When I was a lone coder, I was able to get away with using Perforce for source control, however, when I made the move to commercial games development, I had to switch to something that would support multiple users. I made the decision to use Git over SVN and while I can manage most of the time using TortoiseGit to handle commits, syncs and branches, I do have to head to the command line for the more complex operations.

When you're handling a technology meltdown (like a computer failure or a malware infection) it helps to have a running sheet of the things you're doing to remedy the crisis. Using Git can be a very effective way to do that.

Mac: Beta application Tower is a graphical front-end to the popular version-control system Git. If you've never heard of Git, it's probably not for you; if you're a Git user who wouldn't mind a more GUI-friendly Git, it looks very promising.