A developer built Veridian, a simplified version control system in Rust, to understand Git's internals. Git is fundamentally a content-addressable storage system using three object types: blobs (file contents), trees (directory listings), and commits (snapshots with metadata). All objects are stored as SHA-1 hashed, zlib-compressed files in .git/objects. Branches are just text files containing commit hashes. The project revealed that Git's complexity comes from how it's taught, not its underlying architecture. Building a basic version control system with init, hash-object, write-tree, and commit-tree commands provides deeper understanding than reading documentation.
Table of contents
Why Everyone Finds Git ConfusingHere's What Git Actually IsWhat Building Veridian Taught MeThings That Finally ClickedWhat I LearnedWhy You Should Try ThisSort: