Back to the Future in Git

I’m a huge fan of the Back to the Future series! By embracing this obsession, I’ve allowed Back to the Future to become my professional quirk. The movie has become an essential part of my development process from a dedication to using DeLorean Ipsum as well as using Back to the Future stills for all of my test, stock photography.

A few years back, I needed a clever way to showcase a basic understanding of a git workflow using Github. Describing the flow of the Time Machine in Back to the Future 3 was a quick jump for me to use as an example for this project.

Version control to the future!

In 1885, Dr. Emmet L. Brown created schematics documenting the repairs needed to get his time machine back in working order.

He forked the original plans for the DeLorean from John DeLorean’s repository and merged them with the plans for the original time machine created in 1985. He then reset the current schematics, removing the “Hover Conversion” committed in 2015. Unfortunately the time machine will never fly again.

Issues were then created to note all materials not readily available in 1955. Alternatives were supplied.

Once completed, “Time Machine” version 3.0 was tagged.

After Marty McFly successfully made his way back to 1985, “Time Machine” version 3.0 was then destroyed. Going forward, there would be no more branching, forking, or merging from the DeLorean branch. A fresh repository was created. Version 4.0 by Dr. Emmet L. Brown would be a completely unique Time Machine. A Time Machine like no one had ever seen before.

But wait! There’s more…

Yeah yeah… I know this isn’t a thorough or even perfect example of the movie or of Git. It was, however, still a fun exercise in combining the two. If you’re as much of a fan of the movie as I am, check out our Back to the Future t-shirts: