Why's Git called Git ?

Why the name I could not find any answer in the documentation ?

Aaron

On Tue, 4 Jul 2006, Aaron Gray wrote:

Why the name I could not find any answer in the documentation ?

It's really quite random. It needs to be a two- or three-letter thing just 
because I end up typing a lot. 

My favourite explanation is "I name all my projects after myself: first 
'Linux', now 'git'".

Which only makes sense if you know british slang.

The runner up was "Because 'twerp' was too hard to type".

But really, there's not a lot of real thinking behind it. The made-up 
acronym was "global information tracker", but that's a pretty bad excuse 
too.

It just happened. Don't ask me why. All the explanations are really made 
up after the fact.

		Linus

Anyway good going, I am glad Linux has an open source VCS again now.

I do not know how BitKeeper are going to fell knowing they have been 
replaced by a Git :)

I am toying with using a VCS for a set of related projects, either CVS 
because its well known, SubVersion for ease of use, or Git as it is new. 
Lots to descide upon, any pointers would be appreciated.

All the best to the Git team.

Regards,

Aaron

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Linus Torvalds" <torvalds@osdl.org>
To: "Aaron Gray" <redacted>
Cc: "Git Mailing List" <redacted>
Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2006 4:28 AM
Subject: Re: Why's Git called Git ?

On Tue, 4 Jul 2006, Aaron Gray wrote:

quoted

Why the name I could not find any answer in the documentation ?

It's really quite random. It needs to be a two- or three-letter thing just
because I end up typing a lot.

My favourite explanation is "I name all my projects after myself: first
'Linux', now 'git'".

Which only makes sense if you know british slang.

The runner up was "Because 'twerp' was too hard to type".

But really, there's not a lot of real thinking behind it. The made-up
acronym was "global information tracker", but that's a pretty bad excuse
too.

It just happened. Don't ask me why. All the explanations are really made
up after the fact.

Linus 

Aaron Gray wrote:

Anyway good going, I am glad Linux has an open source VCS again now.

I do not know how BitKeeper are going to fell knowing they have been 
replaced by a Git :)

I am toying with using a VCS for a set of related projects, either CVS 
because its well known, SubVersion for ease of use, or Git as it is new. 
Lots to descide upon, any pointers would be appreciated.

CVS is showing it's age; mainly the fact that IIRC it began as a series of
scripts over RCS, file level version control system, extending version
control to sets of files, somewhat. Branching in CVS is serious PITA.
Renaming _with_ retaining full and correct history: forget about it.

Subversion is "better CVS": still centralized, CVS infernal branching
replaced by "cheap copy" branching. Well known, replaces CVS thorough OSS
projects.

Git, Mercurial, Monotone, Bazaar-NG, Darcs are new brand of distributed VCS.
I really like notion of branching in Git; but be warned about tracking and
not recording renames, and the need of explicit packing (the latter very
minor). Powerfull, perhaps too powerfull for newbie user: but that is what
Cogito is for (although now Git contains fairly large set of high-level
commands).

  http://git.or.cz/
  http://git.or.cz/gitwiki
  http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/Git
and "Other version control software" at
  http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitLinks

P.S. If you decide to use Git as VCS for your project, consider adding entry
about it on http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitProjects wiki page.
-- 
Jakub Narebski
Warsaw, Poland
ShadeHawk on #git (at FreeNode)