git

git is a source code control tool that was originally written by Linus Torvalds when the Linux kernel was looking for a new source code control system. It is a distributed system, which differs from traditional source code control systems such as cvs in that it is not required to be connected to a server in order to make a commit to the repository.

git is one of the most powerful, flexible, and fast source code control systems currently available, and has an active development team working behind it. The main web page for git can be found at http://git.or.cz/. It is recommended that any new user of git go through the published tutorials in order to become familiar with how git works, and how to use it properly.

The Linux kernel is developed using git, and the latest git kernel tree can be found at http://www.kernel.org/git/, along with a large list of other kernel developer's git repositories.

It is not necessary to use git in order to do Linux kernel development, but it is very handy in helping to track down kernel bugs. If you report a bug to the Linux kernel developers, they might ask you to use git bisect in order to find the exact change that caused the bug to happen. If so, follow the directions in the git documentation for how to use this.

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