1-1: The Project

I know you're here to learn about Git, so you might have expected a whole folder worth of code—Python maybe, or JavaScript. But all you'll find in here is text in Markdown files. That's because Git is about much more than just code. It's a way to manage any project based around files that changes over time. It's a way to manage those changes, explore possibile alternate versions, and easily collaborate with your team.

There's nothing about Git that is necessarily specific to programming projects. Anything that is mostly about text can be managed with Git. So we're going to make ourselves a book—a book that can be published as a PDF, an eBook, or a website. This book will be about Git itself, but yours can be about whatever you like.

Every organization, every team...heck, every person, struggles with documenting their processes and procedures. The bigger the organization, the bigger the struggle. That's why a method of easily producing and maintaining documentation is so valuable. Learning Git (and Markdown, while we're at it) will empower you to produce documentation you know can be maintained for years.

Goals

When considering a documentation platform, we need it to be:

• Easy to update
• Easy to read
• Easy to search

Honkit and Markdown fit the bill here.

Why Markdown? Why Honkit?

With a project structure built entirely on plaintext files, we don't need to worry about losing the data to some proprietary platform that someday we'll need to migrate from. Text is not beholden to licensing. Even if someday Honkit stops working, the site/book you make with the code will continue to function, and using the text files with any other generating tool will be simple.

Project management products have come and gone. You know what has stood the test of time? HTML. That's why I'm putting my documentation in it.

Learning Markdown

Reading this documentation's source will give you a solid overview of Markdown syntax. Honkit will handle the conversion to HTML. If you want to learn more about Markdown syntax, check out Commonmark.

Check For Understanding

Using Markdown, create a list of goals for your own set of documentation. It can be about absolutely anything. Honestly if I weren't trying to sound professional, I'd probably make this whole thing about the evolution of Star Trek starship design. You do you—but do it in Markdown!