GitHub: A Guide to Modern Version Control

About the book

In a world increasingly shaped by AI, the ability to manage change is more critical than ever. A Guide to Modern Version Control is the definitive handbook for mastering Git and GitHub — not just as tools for software development but as the bedrock for a new era of hybrid creativity. Generative AI has amplified, not diminished, the importance of version control. This book provides the essential skills for anyone collaborating on complex projects, from developers working alongside AI coding assistants to writers co-authoring documents with language models. It gives you the perfect mechanism for managing human-AI interaction with a transparent, auditable history of every change.

What's inside

• Core concepts: the difference between Git and GitHub, and distributed version control
• Install and configure Git on any platform; the modify, stage, commit workflow
• Branching, merging, and the pull request workflow for human and AI contributions
• GitHub Actions for CI/CD: testing and deploying your code
• Manage complex projects with GitHub Issues, Projects, and a great README
• Leverage the ecosystem: Pages, Gists, Codespaces
• Secure your code with Dependabot and automated secret and vulnerability scanning

What you'll take away

• Run a clean, auditable history of every change in your project
• Confidently review, accept, or reject contributions from human and AI collaborators
• Automate test, release, and deployment pipelines end to end
• Keep your supply chain and secrets hygienic by default