Lab 01 — Git Fundamentals

Day 1 of the CI/CD for Ignition masterclass.

Build a working mental model of Git, and learn to operate confidently with branches, commits, merges, and rebases.

This is the first lab in the course. We deliberately stay out of Ignition territory for now — the only subject of our Git exercises is a tiny generic Python app in sample-app/. Ignition-specific deployments arrive later in the series.

Prerequisites

• Work in WSL2 (Windows), Linux, or macOS — run all lab commands there, not in PowerShell or Git Bash (see the platform notes in your welcome package)
• Pass cicd-preflight
• Fork this repo to your own GitHub account and clone your fork before the live session — every lab repo gets forked to your personal space, so you can commit, branch and push freely

Quick start

mkdir -p ~/mustry-academy && cd ~/mustry-academy                   # one parent folder for all 8 lab repos
gh repo fork mustry-academy/cicd-lab-01-git-fundamentals --clone   # fork to your account + clone your fork
#   …or press "Fork" on github.com, then clone YOUR fork:
#   git clone git@github.com:<your-username>/cicd-lab-01-git-fundamentals.git
cd cicd-lab-01-git-fundamentals
code .                                                             # open in VS Code (WSL: opens connected to WSL)
python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r sample-app/requirements.txt
pytest sample-app/tests

WSL2 (Windows): keep the folder in your Linux home (~/…), never /mnt/c/…. Git is far slower across the Windows boundary, line endings get messy, and from Lab 02 onwards the Docker labs break outright on /mnt/c because file ownership cannot be made to stick there. Start on the Linux side now and every later lab works.

Lab structure

One continuous ~3-hour lab (09:00–12:00) that interleaves Git's object model with everyday workflows, so the model becomes the lens for every command you run. The full walk-through lives in exercises/lab.md:

• Introduction — welcome to the series and how the labs work
• The Oatmakers story — a fictional client (eight Ignition sites, zero CI/CD) sets the stage for why this series exists
• Teaching — what Git is, the object model (blob/tree/commit/branch/HEAD), the merge · rebase · cherry-pick workflows, remotes & tags, the command vocabulary, git blame/git reset, and .gitignore
• We-do — the instructor live-codes the moves: add/commit, switch, branch, merge (fast-forward vs --no-ff), rebase, and recovery
• You-do (breakout rooms) — a guided warm-up, then a solo spelunk-then-build exercise, plus optional stretch challenges
• Wrap-up & questions

Repo layout

cicd-lab-01-git-fundamentals/
├── README.md
├── exercises/
│   └── lab.md
├── docs/                         ← reference reading
│   ├── why-version-control.md
│   └── git-object-model.md
├── instructor-notes/             ← answer key (read after solo work)
│   └── lab-key.md
├── slides/                       ← the presented decks, in session order
│   ├── introduction.html
│   ├── oatmakers-story.html
│   ├── teaching.html
│   ├── assignment.html
│   └── logos/
├── scripts/
│   ├── seed-messy-state.sh       ← deterministic dirty working tree for the workflow phase
│   └── verify-lab.sh             ← sanity-check the solo focused-commit step
└── sample-app/                   ← the tiny Python app we'll version together
    ├── app.py
    ├── requirements.txt
    ├── tests/
    │   └── test_app.py
    └── README.md

Licence

Apache 2.0 — see LICENSE.