Most Git tutorials cover init, add, commit and push, then stop. They leave out branches, rebasing, conflict resolution, platform differences, real-world workflows and everything that actually matters when you join a team or contribute to open source for the first time.
The more advanced resources are often paywalled. Platform-specific ones cover GitHub and ignore everything else. None of them cover what happens when things go wrong.
I was frustrated. So I built what I wished had existed.
What git-unlocked actually contains.
git-unlocked is a free, open-source Git and version control course. v1.2.0 ships 217 files across 12 sections covering eight platforms. MIT licensed. No paywall. No account required. No upsell.
The course covers Git core from init to internals, with every command explained at the level of what it actually does. Full platform coverage includes GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Azure DevOps, Gitea, Forgejo and Codeberg. The IDE section covers VS Code, JetBrains, Neovim, Cursor and Zed. The terminal tools section covers lazygit, git-delta and fzf.
The real-world section covers GitOps with ArgoCD and Flux, monorepo patterns using Nx and Turborepo, disaster recovery from force push accidents and supply chain security including gitleaks, TruffleHog and commit signing. A curated resource index collects 120 books, videos, tools and communities with recommended learning paths by level.
Every file shows commands on Windows, Mac and Linux side by side. Nothing is assumed. Nothing is skipped.
The repo ships a first-contribution sandbox that lets anyone make their first open source pull request in under ten minutes, a full CHANGELOG, a CONTRIBUTING guide, a HALL_OF_FAME for contributors and GitHub Actions CI running automated markdownlint and link validation on every push.
What writing it taught me.
Teaching is one of the most effective ways to learn. Writing 217 files about Git forced me to understand everything at a depth I would not have reached by just using it.
When you write a glossary definition for every Git term you quickly find the concepts you only half understand. When you try to explain a rebase clearly enough for a complete beginner to follow without getting lost, you find out whether you actually understand it yourself.
The CHANGELOG tells the story of how the project grew. Reading from v0.1.0 to v1.2.0 shows how a course outline became a reference. Good documentation is not written once. It is maintained.
Why free and open source.
Because the cost of knowledge should not be access.
I was a student who needed to understand version control properly and found the landscape fragmented, shallow and paywalled. Open sourcing under MIT means anyone can take it, fork it and build on it. A contributor from another country can add platform coverage I do not have. A lecturer can use it in a class. A bootcamp can point students to it without a licensing conversation.
None of that requires my involvement or anyone's money.
GitHub: github.com/zaccesss/git-unlocked
Project page: isaacadjei.me/projects/git-unlocked
Next issue: bare metal AVR programming. No frameworks, no Arduino library and no shortcuts.
Zac
