Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference North America 2026

Beyond version control, git is an incredibly powerful code exploration and debugging toolkit hiding in plain sight. In this talk, we'll look under the hood at how git stores, references, and tracks data, and then leverage those internals in practical, real-world workflows to navigate and debug code.

We'll walk through hands‑on examples using tools such as reflog, blame, log -S/-G, pathspecs, grep, and bisect to answer questions developers face every day: Where did this behavior come from? Why is this code like this? and When did this bug appear?

We'll also discuss best practices for maintaining clean, informative git history; because well-crafted commits make these tools dramatically more effective. Whether you're new to git's advanced commands or already comfortable with the plumbing layer, you'll leave with actionable techniques to understand codebases faster and get more value from the tool you already use every day.