Git Merge 2025 | Sep 29 - 30, 2025 | San Francisco, CA & Online

Git Merge 2025: September 29 - 30

GitHub HQ, San Francisco, CA

Celebrating 20 years of Git

Git Merge is a conference dedicated to the version control tool that started it all—and the people who use it every day. As Git marks its 20th anniversary, join us to explore its impact, evolution, and future.

Join us in person for just $99—or tune in from anywhere for free via livestream. Got a great talk idea but can’t make it to SF? Remote speakers are welcome too.

Get tickets

About

About Git Merge

Git Merge is dedicated to amplifying new voices in the Git community and showcasing the most thought-provoking projects from developers, maintainers, and teams around the world.

Speakers

Scott Chacon

CEO & Co-founder, GitButler

Scott Chacon is the former cofounder of GitHub; now cofounder of GitButler, a next generation version control client, based in Berlin. Scott helped grow GitHub from 4 cofounders to 450 employees over 8 years, eventually being acquired by Microsoft for $7.5 billion. Scott is also the author of Pro Git, published by Apress and found online at git-scm.com. In unrelated news, he holds a WSET Level 3 certification in Wines and Spirits and owns a dog rescue outside of Berlin.

Session

September 15, 2022 @ 11:30am

Rebase -AI

As AI powered generative coding is becoming more popular with tools like Copilot agent, Claude Code and Cursor, there are increasingly interesting challenges to manage the code created in your Git repositories. This talk will show a few approaches to teaching these agents how to commit with good commit messages (why rather than what), amending, squashing and rebasing strategies and challenges, forge management and more.

We will look at several of the git-related MCP servers available, show how I've developed tooling to help with my process and explore what can be done in both Git and MCP to improve the process even more.
Natalie Marleny

Co-Founder & Software Engineer, Gitlip

@ataliemarleny
Natalie Marleny is a Co-Founder of Gitlip

Session

September 15, 2022 @ 2:00pm

Building a serverless Git server

What does it take to build a Git server from the ground up, tailored for modern, distributed environments? This talk explores our experience of constructing a horizontally scalable Git server using WebAssembly and a serverless architecture. We navigated challenges like compiling libgit2 to Wasm, emulating synchronous filesystem operations in an asynchronous context, and implementing Git server protocols absent in existing libraries. Our journey led to a compact, efficient Git server capable of running in constrained environments, opening doors to new possibilities in version control and collaborative development.

What the audience will learn:

* Insights into Git's internal mechanisms and their behavior in non-traditional environments.
* Strategies for hosting Git repositories using serverless architectures.
* Techniques for compiling and adapting native libraries like libgit2 for WebAssembly targets.
* Approaches to implementing Git server functionalities from scratch.
* Lessons on scaling Git infrastructure without relying on traditional servers or containers.
* The potential of modular Git capabilities in enhancing versioning and collaborative workflows.
Taylor Blau

Staff Software Engineer, GitHub

@ttaylorr_b
Taylor is a Staff Software Engineer at GitHub, where he works on Git. He is also a member of Git's Project Leadership Committee.

Session

September 15, 2022 @ 2:30pm

New techniques in repacking monorepos

Git has introduced powerful new tools for managing large monorepos: geometric repacking, on-disk reverse indexes, and reachability bitmaps for multi-pack indexes (MIDX). These have made it feasible to repack massive repositories without collapsing everything into a single packfile.

Still, many large-scale Git deployments rely on periodic all-into-one repacks. But with recent support for incremental MIDX and associated bitmaps, Git can now avoid full repacks entirely, paving the way for the next scale of repository growth.

This talk explores these features in detail, how they work under the hood, and the modern repacking strategies they unlock (particularly those used at GitHub and beyond).
Patrick Steinhardt

Engineering Manager, GitLab

Session

September 15, 2022 @ 11:00am

The long road towards native large object support in Git

Git is infamous for not being able to handle large binary files well. While solutions like Git LFS help, those tools are not a panacea either and have their own challenges. This talk sheds a light on ongoing efforts that aim to provide a native solution for storing large objects.
Dhruva Juloori

Senior Software Engineer, Uber

@djuloori27
Dhruva Juloori is a Senior Software Engineer at Uber, specializing in Machine Learning and Algorithms. He is the key engineer behind Uber's SubmitQueue, a transformative CI scheduling system that guarantees an always-green mainline at scale by handling hundreds of changes per hour across Uber's diverse monorepos. Dhruva's work empowers thousands of engineers to deliver high-quality code efficiently. His work focuses on building scalable distributed and ML systems that enhance developer productivity and streamline CI/CD processes.

Session

September 15, 2022 @ 3:15pm

Merging at Uber's Scale while always maintaining Green Mainlines

At Uber’s scale, guaranteeing an always-green mainline while processing hundreds of changes per hour across diverse monorepos, each supporting tens of business-critical apps, presents significant challenges, such as growing queues of pending changes, frequent conflicts, build failures, and unacceptable land times. These bottlenecks slow down development, negatively impact developer productivity and sentiment, and make Continuous Integration of changes increasingly difficult. In this talk, I’ll explore the design and evolution of MergeQueue—Uber’s innovative CI scheduling system that ensures mainline stability and production readiness for every commit. By harnessing speculative validation, build-time and change success predictions, and advanced conflict resolution strategies, MergeQueue delivers unmatched efficiency. It has reduced CI resource usage by approximately 53%, CPU usage by 44%, and P95 waiting times by 37%, significantly improving build reliability and developer velocity across Uber’s engineering ecosystem. These optimizations not only eliminate CI bottlenecks but also enable thousands of engineers to ship code rapidly and reliably, ensuring every commit is production-ready.

Key Learnings:

Scaling CI for High-Commit Velocity – Learn how to design and manage CI systems that process hundreds or even thousands of changes per hour across monorepos while ensuring a green mainline and production-ready commits.
Optimizing CI Efficiency – Understand how speculative validation, build-time predictions, and change success predictions significantly reduce CI resource usage, CPU consumption, and waiting times.
Conflict Resolution in CI – Discover strategies for handling frequent conflicts, build failures, and long land times, ensuring smooth and efficient Continuous Integration at scale.
Best Practices for Scalable Developer Productivity – Gain actionable insights on designing and implementing CI/CD systems that minimize bottlenecks, improve developer experience, and maximize efficiency in large-scale engineering environments.
Fedor Sheremetyev

Co-founder, VisualSVN & VisualJJ

Fedor is a software engineer who has spent 20 years making version control practical at scale. He co-founded VisualSVN, accelerating Subversion adoption on Windows; built VisualJJ, a VSCode bridge to the rising Jujutsu DVCS; and led engineering for Tezos blockchain, where immutable history and rapid UX matter just as much as in Git. Stints at Google and Meta gave him firsthand insight into monorepos, trunk-based development, and the human factors that make - or break - tooling.

Session

September 15, 2022 @ 5:00pm

Evergreen Git, Evolving UX: 20 Years of Lessons from Subversion to Jujutsu

Git’s object model has proven timeless, yet the ways we surface it to humans keep shifting. Drawing on two decades of tool-building - VisualSVN (which made Subversion comfortable for Windows developers) and VisualJJ (bringing the Jujutsu into VSCode) - I’ll trace three UX waves and the concrete patterns that survived each one. We’ll look at how centralised, distributed, and graph-oriented workflows solve discoverability, merge confidence, and scale. Attendees leave with a mental framework for judging tomorrow’s “next Git” ideas - without throwing Git away.
brian m. carlson

Staff Software Engineer, GitHub

brian is a long-time contributor to Git with interests in security, cryptography, and documentation. When they're not contributing to Git or writing other software, you can find them cycling, reading, or spending time with their two cats, Tara and Chester.

Session

September 15, 2022 @ 10:30am

SHA-256 Interoperability: What's Next

Git already has support for repositories using only SHA-256, but lots of users want to convert their existing SHA-1 repositories and interoperate across the two types. We'll discuss what's already been done as far as interoperability between the two algorithms, what's left, and where the pitfalls are.
Pillippa Pérez Pons

Software Engineer

@_pilliin_
I'm Pillippa Pérez Pons, a Frontend Software Engineer, I am passionate about developing innovative web applications that enhance user experiences and improve efficiency. Originally from Chile, I have been living in the Bay Area for the past three years, embracing the vibrant tech community here. Volunteering and community involvement are core to who I am. In 2019 and 2020, I mentored young girls through Niñas Pro, helping them develop their technical skills and inspiring their interest in technology. I also contributed to Django Girls in 2020, creating a welcoming environment for women to learn coding. In 2023, I had the opportunity to be an organizer for JSConf Chile, fostering a collaborative and inclusive tech community. Additionally, I played a significant role in JavaScript Chile 2023, promoting education and growth within the local JavaScript community. My commitment is to empower underrepresented groups and encourage them to pursue careers in technology, believing in their potential to make a significant impact.

Session

September 15, 2022 @ 4:15pm

Git Cat Adventures: Curious Tales of Frontend Rebases and Monorepo Magic

As a frontend engineer, I've faced my share of tangled rebases, elusive commits, and monorepos growing faster than kittens in spring. In this playful yet deeply technical session, we'll unravel recent Git advancements to solve challenging frontend scenarios.

We'll explore:

* Interactive Rebases (git rebase -i) and conflict-resolution magic (rerere).
* Sparse Checkouts and Partial Clones for efficiently managing large frontend monorepos.
* How Git’s latest enhancements—like commit-graphs, bitmaps, and multi-pack indices—dramatically speed up operations.
* Dramatic commit recoveries with Reflog, rescuing code that seemed lost forever.
* Recent improvements in Git’s fetch negotiation to optimize your everyday workflow.

Through relatable, cat-inspired stories and real-world frontend examples, you'll leave with practical, actionable techniques to make Git your purr-fect companion, keeping your projects healthy, agile, and always landing gracefully—just like a cat.
Chris Griffing

Developer Advocate, GitKraken

@cmgriffing
I like to make things and share them with people.

Session

September 15, 2022 @ 4:45pm

The Path to 40 Million Installs: The History of GitLens

GitLens is one of the most downloaded VSCode plugins in the world. What started as a simple tool to surface Git history into an IDE with seamless integration has become a powerhouse of functionality to improve how you work together as a team. Let’s learn how Eric Amodio came up with the idea and the journey it took him on at Microsoft and GitKraken.
Jacob Stopak

Founder, initialcommit.com

@initcommit
Jacob Stopak is a software developer and version control enthusiast dedicated to making Git more intuitive and accessible. He is the creator of Devlands, Git-Sim, and initialcommit.com, projects that are transforming how people learn and experience Git.

Session

September 15, 2022 @ 9:15am

Reimagining Git Learning through Visualization and Gamification

In this talk, I will share my (ongoing) journey and mission to reimagine Git learning and usage. My ultimate goal is to transform what can often be a challenging and intimidating process into something approachable - and maybe even fun!

Git has the potential to connect anyone (not just the tech-savvy) to the vast constellation of interlinked codebases and the code within them, especially in the open-source community. The main roadblock? The inherently abstract nature of Git concepts that prevents the average person from easily connecting with Git. Conventional resources and tools struggle to bridge this gap.

I address this by leveraging visualization, simulation, and gamification to connect with developers in creative ways. My initial foray began with annotating the code in Git's initial commit to help myself and others learn how Git works under the hood. I progressed to building a tool in Python to visually simulate Git commands. This paved the way for my current project which renders entire Git repos in a fully immersive game world. By sharing my experiences I hope to inspire current and future devs to reimagine the way they use and interact with dev tools and code.

By making abstract Git concepts more intuitive, I believe we can expand the reach and impact of this powerful tool, turning it into a true bridge between people and code.
Usman Akinyemi

Student, Plaksha University (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence).

I am a passionate open-source contributor and systems programmer with a deep love for Linux and distributed developer tools. As an Outreachy intern with the Git project, I enhanced Git's v2 protocol by extending the HTTP user agent to include OS-level metadata. This improvement helped strengthen diagnostics, security auditing, and ecosystem observability. My open-source contributions span key infrastructure projects including systemd, CPython documentation, Canonical's docs tooling, LLVM, LibreOffice, and medical imaging software under the OSIPI initiative. I am equally committed to community development. I organized a month-long tech exposure webinar for young Nigerians and volunteer with DesignIT to train youth in digital skills. Currently, as a Google Summer of Code contributor, I am building a containerized and DAG-driven pipeline for medical image processing using Kaapana, Kubernetes, and Argo. I strive to bring together code, infrastructure, and advocacy in everything I build.

Session

September 15, 2022 @ 1:15pm

From Theory to Git: A Student's Journey Into Open Source and Core Contributions

When I first encountered Git, it was simply a tool that I used for coursework and personal projects. It felt like a black box of commands that somehow helped me manage my code. I never imagined that I would one day contribute to its development. That changed when I was accepted into the Outreachy program and began my internship with the Git project. During this internship, I worked on a feature to include system information from the uname command in Git’s HTTP user agent string.

This talk is both a personal journey and a technical case study. I will begin by describing how I got started contributing to Git, from selecting the project to understanding the rationale behind the feature I worked on. I will explain the process of navigating Git’s codebase, learning the conventions of the community, and submitting patches for review. I will share technical insights into the design and implementation of the feature, as well as the collaborative processes that helped me succeed.

In addition to the technical content, I will reflect on how open source contributions changed my perspective as a student. It helped me connect academic concepts with the realities of large-scale software development. Through mentorship and community support, I gained not only technical experience but also a sense of belonging and confidence in my abilities. Open source gave me the opportunity to work on meaningful problems, improve my communication and collaboration skills, and access professional opportunities that I may not have encountered otherwise.

This talk is intended for new contributors who are curious about joining projects like Git, for maintainers who are interested in making their projects more accessible, and for anyone who wants to understand how open source can shape the career and mindset of a new developer. I hope to share both inspiration and practical advice based on my own journey.
Lita Cho

Founder/CTO, Moment Technologies

Lita Cho is the co-founder of Moment, building a local-first, notebook-style, document editor that is programmable for developers and is backed by markdown. Before that, she led the Networking team at Lyft, building out software and infrastructure to help scale thousands of microservices. She is passionate about distributed systems and automation, and about building delightful, human-centric tools to make people productive in complex systems.

Session

September 15, 2022 @ 1:30pm

Ship Your Own Git: The Case for Bundling libgit2 in your Desktop APP

We built a local-first, markdown-based document editor that uses Git for versioning. Originally, we shelled out to the user’s Git client—but this led to countless bugs: old versions, missing installs, weird platform edge cases. Asking users to upgrade Git? Not a great onboarding experience.

So we went deeper: embedding Git natively using libgit2. This talk shares our journey migrating from Electron to Tauri, why we rejected go-git, how we navigated Rust and the libgit2 FFI integration, and how we shipped a cross-platform Git client that just works. Along the way, we unlocked secure auth flows, better merge control, and a dramatically smoother developer experience. If you're building Git-backed developer tools or source control workflows, you'll walk away with our learnings about the Tauri and libgit2, and why this stack might be compelling for you.
Steffen Hiller

Staff DevOps Architect, GitHub

Steffen Hiller is a Staff DevOps Architect at GitHub, where he works with some of the company's largest customers. With 25 years of software development experience, he is passionate about tools and processes that enable building high-quality software in an enjoyable and efficient way. When he's near water, Steffen enjoys going kitesurfing.

Session

September 15, 2022 @ 10:00am

Know your repository: Navigating growth with git-metrics

As repositories grow rapidly, especially with the rise of AI-generated code, organizations face challenges and business risks. Growth often goes unnoticed until it impacts developer experience, disrupts automation, or complicates migrations.

In this talk, we’ll explore how the open-source tool git-metrics serves as an entry point for gaining a holistic view of your Git repository that equips developers and maintainers with the insights needed to make informed decisions on repository management strategies and workflows.

We’ll take a practical tour of git-metrics, diving into the Git commands and low-level object analysis it uses to surface meaningful metrics. You’ll see how it tracks historic growth and estimates future growth of commits, trees, blobs and on-disk size, highlights directory and file bloat, shows contributor dynamics and identifies optimization opportunities.

In honor of Git’s 20th anniversary, we’ll also take a look at Git’s own repository metrics.
Elijah Newren

Software Engineer, GitHub

Elijah Newren works at GitHub, which seemed like a natural destination after years of being "that guy" who kept filing and fixing obscure merge bugs in Git (along with a number of other types of bugs too). He's the author of git-filter-repo and wrote the merge-ort strategy, which attempts to combine correctness, speed, and the hope that future contributors won't curse his name. He was named after George Washington (about a quarter of a millennium after), considers "mild" spicy food to be a lie and anything spicier than that to be a weapons-grade munition, and he and his wife have seven daughters and one son.

Session

September 15, 2022 @ 3:45pm

Merging Ahead: Features Unlocked by Git's New Merge Backend

A couple years ago, Git gained a new merge backend that powers merges, rebases, cherry-picks, reverts, and other related commands. This backend has fully replaced the old default. At previous Git Merge conferences, I focused on the performance improvements brought by this new backend, while briefly mentioning some of the new features it had made or would make possible. In this talk, I will cover the new features that have been implemented since its introduction and perhaps preview additional capabilities currently under development.
Piyush Acharya

Founder, DNAnalyzer

Piyush Acharya is a high school researcher building DNAnalyzer, an open-source platform that democratizes on-device genomic analysis. His project hit #1 on GitHub's bioinformatics trending list, and his transformer-based epigenomics work will appear in IEEE BioSMART '25. He was accepted to Y Combinator's prestigious AI Startup School where he is excited to join the AI startup realm. When he isn't pushing for open sourced personal genomics, he mentors USA Computing Olympiad and USA AI Olympiad competitors and advises Congressman Adam Smith on AI policy.

Session

September 15, 2022 @ 4:30pm

Genome sized repos: pushing Git LFS to the edge for reproducible science

How do you manage hundreds of gigabytes of DNA testing data (or for that matter, any files involved in academic research) in Git without blowing up the entire system? I'll discuss the LFS-powered workflow that keeps research pipelines manageable time-wise, reproducible on CI, and friendly to first-time contributors.

Modern DNA testing pipelines use hundreds of gigabytes per sample. Traditional Git tools collapse under that load, yet reproducibility requires version control. In this session, I'll walk through the DNAnalyzer workflow, a free and open source platform that analyzes terabytes of genetic data with Git LFS, filter-process drivers, reftable, and partial clone. You'll see bechmarks showing significant storage reduction, and 5x faster fetch versus packfiles, a zero-downtime HPC CI pipeline and a live demo on a 2 GB RAM machine. You'll be able to leave with scripts to retrofit any bioinformatics or research repo and a call to co-maintain an open LFS mirror network.

Outline:

1. The problem: why FASTQ files explode and how that breaks Git.
2. The stack: LFS, filter-process, reftable, partial clone, CI.
3. Take-home cheatsheet posters for research workflows & next steps.
Zoran Petrovic

Software Developer & Technical Consultant

Zoran Petrovic is a freelance full-stack and cross-platform developer with over 7 years of professional experience. He works end-to-end across the entire software lifecycle – from concept and architecture to implementation and long-term support – always with a holistic view of the system and its users. He is passionate about building thoughtful software that simplifies complexity and creates real value.

Session

September 15, 2022 @ 10:00am

Know your repository: Navigating growth with git-metrics

As repositories grow rapidly, especially with the rise of AI-generated code, organizations face challenges and business risks. Growth often goes unnoticed until it impacts developer experience, disrupts automation, or complicates migrations.

In this talk, we’ll explore how the open-source tool git-metrics serves as an entry point for gaining a holistic view of your Git repository that equips developers and maintainers with the insights needed to make informed decisions on repository management strategies and workflows.

We’ll take a practical tour of git-metrics, diving into the Git commands and low-level object analysis it uses to surface meaningful metrics. You’ll see how it tracks historic growth and estimates future growth of commits, trees, blobs and on-disk size, highlights directory and file bloat, shows contributor dynamics and identifies optimization opportunities.

In honor of Git’s 20th anniversary, we’ll also take a look at Git’s own repository metrics.
Matteo Bianchi

Solutions Engineer, GitHub

Matteo is a Solutions Engineer at GitHub, CNCF Ambassador and Cloud Native aficionado, a former startup CTO and DevRel. Open Source contributor, part of the Kubernetes Release Team since v.1.31, Release Branch Manager since v1.33. Hacker, builder and problem solver by nature. Singing in a metal band whenever there's nothing left to fix in the cloud. @mbianchidev on (almost) every social media.

Session

September 15, 2022 @ 9:45am

The Periodic Table of Git

This talk reimagines Git fundamentals through the lens of the iconic periodic table, transforming complex commands into easy chemical elements.

Are you a version control newbie or want to refresh your Git knowledge? I got you covered.

This talk will help you decode Git’s elements - like commit, branch, merge, and more - by grouping related commands, tracing their “chemical” interactions, and highlighting essential workflows for your day to day.

You’ll leave this one with a clear mental “table” of Git, making your everyday actions less mysterious and troubleshooting much simpler.

git commit --amend -m "Oops, fixed my message!" -m "p.s. I see you reaching for VSCode's UI instead of the good ol' command line for git"
Arman Moztarzadeh

Student and Campus Expert, University of British Columbia

Arman is a fourth-year undergraduate student at the University of British Columbia, studying Mathematics and Data Science. He has previously worked as a software engineering intern at Amazon, Optum, and in the public sector with the Government of Canada. As a GitHub Campus Expert at UBC, Arman is dedicated to creating inclusive spaces where students can learn, collaborate, and build real-world skills. In his free time, you can catch him running, hiking, and skiing in the winter.

Session

September 15, 2022 @ 1:00pm

Git for the Next Generation: How Git is Shaping Education and Student Communities in University

As a GitHub Campus Expert, I’ve worked with students across different faculties and disciplines to teach and help them adopt Git, not just as a version control tool, but as a part of their learning and collaboration. In this talk, I will share how Git is being used at my university and in educational spaces more broadly, from powering student hackathons and class projects to enabling collaborative research and open-source contributions.

I’ll touch on real-world examples of how Git-based workflows are being introduced to students in education environments, the common challenges they face, and what’s working when it comes to making Git more accessible in education. This talk will also highlight how investing in student Git literacy today can lead to a more inclusive and contributor-friendly open-source community.

Schedule

September 29th

8:00am

Registration and breakfast

9:00am

9:15am

Reimagining Git Learning through Visualization and Gamification

September 15, 2025 @ 9:15am

In this talk, I will share my (ongoing) journey and mission to reimagine Git learning and usage. My ultimate goal is to transform what can often be a challenging and intimidating process into something approachable - and maybe even fun!

Git has the potential to connect anyone (not just the tech-savvy) to the vast constellation of interlinked codebases and the code within them, especially in the open-source community. The main roadblock? The inherently abstract nature of Git concepts that prevents the average person from easily connecting with Git. Conventional resources and tools struggle to bridge this gap.

I address this by leveraging visualization, simulation, and gamification to connect with developers in creative ways. My initial foray began with annotating the code in Git's initial commit to help myself and others learn how Git works under the hood. I progressed to building a tool in Python to visually simulate Git commands. This paved the way for my current project which renders entire Git repos in a fully immersive game world. By sharing my experiences I hope to inspire current and future devs to reimagine the way they use and interact with dev tools and code.

By making abstract Git concepts more intuitive, I believe we can expand the reach and impact of this powerful tool, turning it into a true bridge between people and code.

Speaker: Jacob Stopak

Founder, initialcommit.com

Jacob Stopak is a software developer and version control enthusiast dedicated to making Git more intuitive and accessible. He is the creator of Devlands, Git-Sim, and initialcommit.com, projects that are transforming how people learn and experience Git.

9:45am

The Periodic Table of Git

September 15, 2025 @ 9:45am

This talk reimagines Git fundamentals through the lens of the iconic periodic table, transforming complex commands into easy chemical elements.

Are you a version control newbie or want to refresh your Git knowledge? I got you covered.

This talk will help you decode Git’s elements - like commit, branch, merge, and more - by grouping related commands, tracing their “chemical” interactions, and highlighting essential workflows for your day to day.

You’ll leave this one with a clear mental “table” of Git, making your everyday actions less mysterious and troubleshooting much simpler.

git commit --amend -m "Oops, fixed my message!" -m "p.s. I see you reaching for VSCode's UI instead of the good ol' command line for git"

Speaker: Matteo Bianchi

Solutions Engineer, GitHub

Matteo is a Solutions Engineer at GitHub, CNCF Ambassador and Cloud Native aficionado, a former startup CTO and DevRel. Open Source contributor, part of the Kubernetes Release Team since v.1.31, Release Branch Manager since v1.33. Hacker, builder and problem solver by nature. Singing in a metal band whenever there's nothing left to fix in the cloud. @mbianchidev on (almost) every social media.

10:00am

Know your repository: Navigating growth with git-metrics

September 15, 2025 @ 10:00am

As repositories grow rapidly, especially with the rise of AI-generated code, organizations face challenges and business risks. Growth often goes unnoticed until it impacts developer experience, disrupts automation, or complicates migrations.

In this talk, we’ll explore how the open-source tool git-metrics serves as an entry point for gaining a holistic view of your Git repository that equips developers and maintainers with the insights needed to make informed decisions on repository management strategies and workflows.

We’ll take a practical tour of git-metrics, diving into the Git commands and low-level object analysis it uses to surface meaningful metrics. You’ll see how it tracks historic growth and estimates future growth of commits, trees, blobs and on-disk size, highlights directory and file bloat, shows contributor dynamics and identifies optimization opportunities.

In honor of Git’s 20th anniversary, we’ll also take a look at Git’s own repository metrics.

Speaker: Steffen Hiller

Staff DevOps Architect, GitHub

Steffen Hiller is a Staff DevOps Architect at GitHub, where he works with some of the company's largest customers. With 25 years of software development experience, he is passionate about tools and processes that enable building high-quality software in an enjoyable and efficient way. When he's near water, Steffen enjoys going kitesurfing.

Speaker: Zoran Petrovic

Software Developer & Technical Consultant

Zoran Petrovic is a freelance full-stack and cross-platform developer with over 7 years of professional experience. He works end-to-end across the entire software lifecycle – from concept and architecture to implementation and long-term support – always with a holistic view of the system and its users. He is passionate about building thoughtful software that simplifies complexity and creates real value.

10:15am

Break ☕️

10:30am

SHA-256 Interoperability: What's Next

September 15, 2025 @ 10:30am

Git already has support for repositories using only SHA-256, but lots of users want to convert their existing SHA-1 repositories and interoperate across the two types. We'll discuss what's already been done as far as interoperability between the two algorithms, what's left, and where the pitfalls are.

Speaker: brian m. carlson

Staff Software Engineer, GitHub

brian is a long-time contributor to Git with interests in security, cryptography, and documentation. When they're not contributing to Git or writing other software, you can find them cycling, reading, or spending time with their two cats, Tara and Chester.

11:00am

The long road towards native large object support in Git

September 15, 2025 @ 11:00am

Git is infamous for not being able to handle large binary files well. While solutions like Git LFS help, those tools are not a panacea either and have their own challenges. This talk sheds a light on ongoing efforts that aim to provide a native solution for storing large objects.

Speaker: Patrick Steinhardt

Engineering Manager, GitLab

11:30am

Rebase -AI

September 15, 2025 @ 11:30am

As AI powered generative coding is becoming more popular with tools like Copilot agent, Claude Code and Cursor, there are increasingly interesting challenges to manage the code created in your Git repositories. This talk will show a few approaches to teaching these agents how to commit with good commit messages (why rather than what), amending, squashing and rebasing strategies and challenges, forge management and more.

We will look at several of the git-related MCP servers available, show how I've developed tooling to help with my process and explore what can be done in both Git and MCP to improve the process even more.

Speaker: Scott Chacon

CEO & Co-founder, GitButler

Scott Chacon is the former cofounder of GitHub; now cofounder of GitButler, a next generation version control client, based in Berlin. Scott helped grow GitHub from 4 cofounders to 450 employees over 8 years, eventually being acquired by Microsoft for $7.5 billion. Scott is also the author of Pro Git, published by Apress and found online at git-scm.com. In unrelated news, he holds a WSET Level 3 certification in Wines and Spirits and owns a dog rescue outside of Berlin.

12:00pm

Lunch 🍔 🥗 🍕

1:00pm

Git for the Next Generation: How Git is Shaping Education and Student Communities in University

September 15, 2025 @ 1:00pm

As a GitHub Campus Expert, I’ve worked with students across different faculties and disciplines to teach and help them adopt Git, not just as a version control tool, but as a part of their learning and collaboration. In this talk, I will share how Git is being used at my university and in educational spaces more broadly, from powering student hackathons and class projects to enabling collaborative research and open-source contributions.

I’ll touch on real-world examples of how Git-based workflows are being introduced to students in education environments, the common challenges they face, and what’s working when it comes to making Git more accessible in education. This talk will also highlight how investing in student Git literacy today can lead to a more inclusive and contributor-friendly open-source community.

Speaker: Arman Moztarzadeh

Student and Campus Expert, University of British Columbia

Arman is a fourth-year undergraduate student at the University of British Columbia, studying Mathematics and Data Science. He has previously worked as a software engineering intern at Amazon, Optum, and in the public sector with the Government of Canada. As a GitHub Campus Expert at UBC, Arman is dedicated to creating inclusive spaces where students can learn, collaborate, and build real-world skills. In his free time, you can catch him running, hiking, and skiing in the winter.

1:15pm

From Theory to Git: A Student's Journey Into Open Source and Core Contributions

September 15, 2025 @ 1:15pm

When I first encountered Git, it was simply a tool that I used for coursework and personal projects. It felt like a black box of commands that somehow helped me manage my code. I never imagined that I would one day contribute to its development. That changed when I was accepted into the Outreachy program and began my internship with the Git project. During this internship, I worked on a feature to include system information from the uname command in Git’s HTTP user agent string.

This talk is both a personal journey and a technical case study. I will begin by describing how I got started contributing to Git, from selecting the project to understanding the rationale behind the feature I worked on. I will explain the process of navigating Git’s codebase, learning the conventions of the community, and submitting patches for review. I will share technical insights into the design and implementation of the feature, as well as the collaborative processes that helped me succeed.

In addition to the technical content, I will reflect on how open source contributions changed my perspective as a student. It helped me connect academic concepts with the realities of large-scale software development. Through mentorship and community support, I gained not only technical experience but also a sense of belonging and confidence in my abilities. Open source gave me the opportunity to work on meaningful problems, improve my communication and collaboration skills, and access professional opportunities that I may not have encountered otherwise.

This talk is intended for new contributors who are curious about joining projects like Git, for maintainers who are interested in making their projects more accessible, and for anyone who wants to understand how open source can shape the career and mindset of a new developer. I hope to share both inspiration and practical advice based on my own journey.

Speaker: Usman Akinyemi

Student, Plaksha University (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence).

I am a passionate open-source contributor and systems programmer with a deep love for Linux and distributed developer tools. As an Outreachy intern with the Git project, I enhanced Git's v2 protocol by extending the HTTP user agent to include OS-level metadata. This improvement helped strengthen diagnostics, security auditing, and ecosystem observability. My open-source contributions span key infrastructure projects including systemd, CPython documentation, Canonical's docs tooling, LLVM, LibreOffice, and medical imaging software under the OSIPI initiative. I am equally committed to community development. I organized a month-long tech exposure webinar for young Nigerians and volunteer with DesignIT to train youth in digital skills. Currently, as a Google Summer of Code contributor, I am building a containerized and DAG-driven pipeline for medical image processing using Kaapana, Kubernetes, and Argo. I strive to bring together code, infrastructure, and advocacy in everything I build.

1:30pm

Ship Your Own Git: The Case for Bundling libgit2 in your Desktop APP

September 15, 2025 @ 1:30pm

We built a local-first, markdown-based document editor that uses Git for versioning. Originally, we shelled out to the user’s Git client—but this led to countless bugs: old versions, missing installs, weird platform edge cases. Asking users to upgrade Git? Not a great onboarding experience.

So we went deeper: embedding Git natively using libgit2. This talk shares our journey migrating from Electron to Tauri, why we rejected go-git, how we navigated Rust and the libgit2 FFI integration, and how we shipped a cross-platform Git client that just works. Along the way, we unlocked secure auth flows, better merge control, and a dramatically smoother developer experience. If you're building Git-backed developer tools or source control workflows, you'll walk away with our learnings about the Tauri and libgit2, and why this stack might be compelling for you.

Speaker: Lita Cho

Founder/CTO, Moment Technologies

Lita Cho is the co-founder of Moment, building a local-first, notebook-style, document editor that is programmable for developers and is backed by markdown. Before that, she led the Networking team at Lyft, building out software and infrastructure to help scale thousands of microservices. She is passionate about distributed systems and automation, and about building delightful, human-centric tools to make people productive in complex systems.

2:00pm

Building a serverless Git server

September 15, 2025 @ 2:00pm

What does it take to build a Git server from the ground up, tailored for modern, distributed environments? This talk explores our experience of constructing a horizontally scalable Git server using WebAssembly and a serverless architecture. We navigated challenges like compiling libgit2 to Wasm, emulating synchronous filesystem operations in an asynchronous context, and implementing Git server protocols absent in existing libraries. Our journey led to a compact, efficient Git server capable of running in constrained environments, opening doors to new possibilities in version control and collaborative development.

What the audience will learn:

* Insights into Git's internal mechanisms and their behavior in non-traditional environments.
* Strategies for hosting Git repositories using serverless architectures.
* Techniques for compiling and adapting native libraries like libgit2 for WebAssembly targets.
* Approaches to implementing Git server functionalities from scratch.
* Lessons on scaling Git infrastructure without relying on traditional servers or containers.
* The potential of modular Git capabilities in enhancing versioning and collaborative workflows.

Speaker: Natalie Marleny

Co-Founder & Software Engineer, Gitlip

Natalie Marleny is a Co-Founder of Gitlip

2:30pm

New techniques in repacking monorepos

September 15, 2025 @ 2:30pm

Git has introduced powerful new tools for managing large monorepos: geometric repacking, on-disk reverse indexes, and reachability bitmaps for multi-pack indexes (MIDX). These have made it feasible to repack massive repositories without collapsing everything into a single packfile.

Still, many large-scale Git deployments rely on periodic all-into-one repacks. But with recent support for incremental MIDX and associated bitmaps, Git can now avoid full repacks entirely, paving the way for the next scale of repository growth.

This talk explores these features in detail, how they work under the hood, and the modern repacking strategies they unlock (particularly those used at GitHub and beyond).

Speaker: Taylor Blau

Staff Software Engineer, GitHub

Taylor is a Staff Software Engineer at GitHub, where he works on Git. He is also a member of Git's Project Leadership Committee.

3:00pm

Break ☕️

3:15pm

Merging at Uber's Scale while always maintaining Green Mainlines

September 15, 2025 @ 3:15pm

At Uber’s scale, guaranteeing an always-green mainline while processing hundreds of changes per hour across diverse monorepos, each supporting tens of business-critical apps, presents significant challenges, such as growing queues of pending changes, frequent conflicts, build failures, and unacceptable land times. These bottlenecks slow down development, negatively impact developer productivity and sentiment, and make Continuous Integration of changes increasingly difficult. In this talk, I’ll explore the design and evolution of MergeQueue—Uber’s innovative CI scheduling system that ensures mainline stability and production readiness for every commit. By harnessing speculative validation, build-time and change success predictions, and advanced conflict resolution strategies, MergeQueue delivers unmatched efficiency. It has reduced CI resource usage by approximately 53%, CPU usage by 44%, and P95 waiting times by 37%, significantly improving build reliability and developer velocity across Uber’s engineering ecosystem. These optimizations not only eliminate CI bottlenecks but also enable thousands of engineers to ship code rapidly and reliably, ensuring every commit is production-ready.

Key Learnings:

Scaling CI for High-Commit Velocity – Learn how to design and manage CI systems that process hundreds or even thousands of changes per hour across monorepos while ensuring a green mainline and production-ready commits.
Optimizing CI Efficiency – Understand how speculative validation, build-time predictions, and change success predictions significantly reduce CI resource usage, CPU consumption, and waiting times.
Conflict Resolution in CI – Discover strategies for handling frequent conflicts, build failures, and long land times, ensuring smooth and efficient Continuous Integration at scale.
Best Practices for Scalable Developer Productivity – Gain actionable insights on designing and implementing CI/CD systems that minimize bottlenecks, improve developer experience, and maximize efficiency in large-scale engineering environments.

Speaker: Dhruva Juloori

Senior Software Engineer, Uber

Dhruva Juloori is a Senior Software Engineer at Uber, specializing in Machine Learning and Algorithms. He is the key engineer behind Uber's SubmitQueue, a transformative CI scheduling system that guarantees an always-green mainline at scale by handling hundreds of changes per hour across Uber's diverse monorepos. Dhruva's work empowers thousands of engineers to deliver high-quality code efficiently. His work focuses on building scalable distributed and ML systems that enhance developer productivity and streamline CI/CD processes.

3:45pm

Merging Ahead: Features Unlocked by Git's New Merge Backend

September 15, 2025 @ 3:45pm

A couple years ago, Git gained a new merge backend that powers merges, rebases, cherry-picks, reverts, and other related commands. This backend has fully replaced the old default. At previous Git Merge conferences, I focused on the performance improvements brought by this new backend, while briefly mentioning some of the new features it had made or would make possible. In this talk, I will cover the new features that have been implemented since its introduction and perhaps preview additional capabilities currently under development.

Speaker: Elijah Newren

Software Engineer, GitHub

Elijah Newren works at GitHub, which seemed like a natural destination after years of being "that guy" who kept filing and fixing obscure merge bugs in Git (along with a number of other types of bugs too). He's the author of git-filter-repo and wrote the merge-ort strategy, which attempts to combine correctness, speed, and the hope that future contributors won't curse his name. He was named after George Washington (about a quarter of a millennium after), considers "mild" spicy food to be a lie and anything spicier than that to be a weapons-grade munition, and he and his wife have seven daughters and one son.

4:15pm

Git Cat Adventures: Curious Tales of Frontend Rebases and Monorepo Magic

September 15, 2025 @ 4:15pm

As a frontend engineer, I've faced my share of tangled rebases, elusive commits, and monorepos growing faster than kittens in spring. In this playful yet deeply technical session, we'll unravel recent Git advancements to solve challenging frontend scenarios.

We'll explore:

* Interactive Rebases (git rebase -i) and conflict-resolution magic (rerere).
* Sparse Checkouts and Partial Clones for efficiently managing large frontend monorepos.
* How Git’s latest enhancements—like commit-graphs, bitmaps, and multi-pack indices—dramatically speed up operations.
* Dramatic commit recoveries with Reflog, rescuing code that seemed lost forever.
* Recent improvements in Git’s fetch negotiation to optimize your everyday workflow.

Through relatable, cat-inspired stories and real-world frontend examples, you'll leave with practical, actionable techniques to make Git your purr-fect companion, keeping your projects healthy, agile, and always landing gracefully—just like a cat.

Speaker: Pillippa Pérez Pons

Software Engineer

I'm Pillippa Pérez Pons, a Frontend Software Engineer, I am passionate about developing innovative web applications that enhance user experiences and improve efficiency. Originally from Chile, I have been living in the Bay Area for the past three years, embracing the vibrant tech community here. Volunteering and community involvement are core to who I am. In 2019 and 2020, I mentored young girls through Niñas Pro, helping them develop their technical skills and inspiring their interest in technology. I also contributed to Django Girls in 2020, creating a welcoming environment for women to learn coding. In 2023, I had the opportunity to be an organizer for JSConf Chile, fostering a collaborative and inclusive tech community. Additionally, I played a significant role in JavaScript Chile 2023, promoting education and growth within the local JavaScript community. My commitment is to empower underrepresented groups and encourage them to pursue careers in technology, believing in their potential to make a significant impact.

4:30pm

Genome sized repos: pushing Git LFS to the edge for reproducible science

September 15, 2025 @ 4:30pm

How do you manage hundreds of gigabytes of DNA testing data (or for that matter, any files involved in academic research) in Git without blowing up the entire system? I'll discuss the LFS-powered workflow that keeps research pipelines manageable time-wise, reproducible on CI, and friendly to first-time contributors.

Modern DNA testing pipelines use hundreds of gigabytes per sample. Traditional Git tools collapse under that load, yet reproducibility requires version control. In this session, I'll walk through the DNAnalyzer workflow, a free and open source platform that analyzes terabytes of genetic data with Git LFS, filter-process drivers, reftable, and partial clone. You'll see bechmarks showing significant storage reduction, and 5x faster fetch versus packfiles, a zero-downtime HPC CI pipeline and a live demo on a 2 GB RAM machine. You'll be able to leave with scripts to retrofit any bioinformatics or research repo and a call to co-maintain an open LFS mirror network.

Outline:

1. The problem: why FASTQ files explode and how that breaks Git.
2. The stack: LFS, filter-process, reftable, partial clone, CI.
3. Take-home cheatsheet posters for research workflows & next steps.

Speaker: Piyush Acharya

Founder, DNAnalyzer

Piyush Acharya is a high school researcher building DNAnalyzer, an open-source platform that democratizes on-device genomic analysis. His project hit #1 on GitHub's bioinformatics trending list, and his transformer-based epigenomics work will appear in IEEE BioSMART '25. He was accepted to Y Combinator's prestigious AI Startup School where he is excited to join the AI startup realm. When he isn't pushing for open sourced personal genomics, he mentors USA Computing Olympiad and USA AI Olympiad competitors and advises Congressman Adam Smith on AI policy.

4:45pm

The Path to 40 Million Installs: The History of GitLens

September 15, 2025 @ 4:45pm

GitLens is one of the most downloaded VSCode plugins in the world. What started as a simple tool to surface Git history into an IDE with seamless integration has become a powerhouse of functionality to improve how you work together as a team. Let’s learn how Eric Amodio came up with the idea and the journey it took him on at Microsoft and GitKraken.

Speaker: Chris Griffing

Developer Advocate, GitKraken

I like to make things and share them with people.

5:00pm

Evergreen Git, Evolving UX: 20 Years of Lessons from Subversion to Jujutsu

September 15, 2025 @ 5:00pm

Git’s object model has proven timeless, yet the ways we surface it to humans keep shifting. Drawing on two decades of tool-building - VisualSVN (which made Subversion comfortable for Windows developers) and VisualJJ (bringing the Jujutsu into VSCode) - I’ll trace three UX waves and the concrete patterns that survived each one. We’ll look at how centralised, distributed, and graph-oriented workflows solve discoverability, merge confidence, and scale. Attendees leave with a mental framework for judging tomorrow’s “next Git” ideas - without throwing Git away.

Speaker: Fedor Sheremetyev

Co-founder, VisualSVN & VisualJJ

Fedor is a software engineer who has spent 20 years making version control practical at scale. He co-founded VisualSVN, accelerating Subversion adoption on Windows; built VisualJJ, a VSCode bridge to the rising Jujutsu DVCS; and led engineering for Tezos blockchain, where immutable history and rapid UX matter just as much as in Git. Stints at Google and Meta gave him firsthand insight into monorepos, trunk-based development, and the human factors that make - or break - tooling.

5:30pm

6:00pm

Cocktail reception 🍸

September 30th

Git Contributor Summit and Unconference details coming soon.

Experience

Getting to Git Merge

Travel tips for every leg of your trip.

Event details

Where:
GitHub HQ, 88 Colin P Kelly Jnr St, San Francisco, CA, USA

When:
September 29 - 30, 2025

Travel and lodging

By plane:
We recommend flying into San Francisco International Airport (13 miles away from the venue) or Oakland International Airport (19 miles away from the venue).

By car:
Public parking lots are available near the venue at your own cost. You’ll also find a variety of ridesharing, rental car services, and even self-driving cars(!) in the San Francisco area.

By public transport:
The venue is walking distance from the Montgomery BART and San Francisco Caltrain stations.

Lodging

You’ll find lots of hotels and AirBnBs near the venue.

GitHub HQ

Where:
GitHub HQ, San Francisco, CA, 94588

When:
Sep 29, 2025 6pm - 8pm

We’ll be closing out the day with a reception. Unwind from the day, meet more attendees, and enjoy a cocktail or two.

FAQ

Refunds and waitlists

Can I get a refund for my ticket?

Yes, you can get a refund for Git Merge 2025. To request a refund:

Log in to your Eventbrite account
Click Tickets in the drop-down menu on your profile photo in the top-right corner
Click Git Merge 2025
Click Request a Refund and complete the form

How do I change the name or selections on my ticket?

Log into your Eventbrite account or open your ticket confirmation email:

Find Order summary details
Click View and manage your online order
Find Edit your ticket type
Make necessary updates to the ticket profile and hit save

Sessions and content

Will the event be recorded or live streamed?: Sessions will be recorded and made available on YouTube after the event. We will be live streaming the event. Please register for a Free Remote Pass.

Food and beverage

Do you provide breakfast and lunch?: A light breakfast, full lunch, and snacks will be served with vegetarian, vegan, dairy-free, and gluten-free options.
What time are meals served?: You can see meal times in our event schedule. Please leave enough time to pick up your badge and grab a bite to eat before start time.

Cocktail Reception

Where and when is the Git Merge closing reception?: The reception will be at GitHub HQ from 6-8 pm on Sep 29th. Complimentary beverages and light bites will be served.
Will non-alcoholic beverages be available?: Yes.
Can I bring a guest to the reception?: Only registered attendees with a badge will be permitted to attend the closing reception.

Venue Quesitons

Help Desk

Celebrating 20 years of Git

Scott Chacon

Session

Natalie Marleny

Session

Taylor Blau

Session

Patrick Steinhardt

Session

Dhruva Juloori

Session

Fedor Sheremetyev

Session

brian m. carlson

Session

Pillippa Pérez Pons

Session

Chris Griffing

Session

Jacob Stopak

Session

Usman Akinyemi

Session

Lita Cho

Session

Steffen Hiller

Session

Elijah Newren

Session

Piyush Acharya

Session

Zoran Petrovic

Session

Matteo Bianchi

Session

Arman Moztarzadeh

Session

September 29th

Opening remarks

Opening remarks

Reimagining Git Learning through Visualization and Gamification

Reimagining Git Learning through Visualization and Gamification

The Periodic Table of Git

The Periodic Table of Git

Know your repository: Navigating growth with git-metrics

Know your repository: Navigating growth with git-metrics

SHA-256 Interoperability: What's Next

SHA-256 Interoperability: What's Next

The long road towards native large object support in Git

The long road towards native large object support in Git

Rebase -AI

Rebase -AI

Git for the Next Generation: How Git is Shaping Education and Student Communities in University

Git for the Next Generation: How Git is Shaping Education and Student Communities in University

From Theory to Git: A Student's Journey Into Open Source and Core Contributions

From Theory to Git: A Student's Journey Into Open Source and Core Contributions

Ship Your Own Git: The Case for Bundling libgit2 in your Desktop APP

Ship Your Own Git: The Case for Bundling libgit2 in your Desktop APP

Building a serverless Git server

Building a serverless Git server

New techniques in repacking monorepos

New techniques in repacking monorepos

Merging at Uber's Scale while always maintaining Green Mainlines

Merging at Uber's Scale while always maintaining Green Mainlines

Merging Ahead: Features Unlocked by Git's New Merge Backend

Merging Ahead: Features Unlocked by Git's New Merge Backend

Git Cat Adventures: Curious Tales of Frontend Rebases and Monorepo Magic

Git Cat Adventures: Curious Tales of Frontend Rebases and Monorepo Magic

Genome sized repos: pushing Git LFS to the edge for reproducible science

Genome sized repos: pushing Git LFS to the edge for reproducible science

The Path to 40 Million Installs: The History of GitLens

The Path to 40 Million Installs: The History of GitLens

Evergreen Git, Evolving UX: 20 Years of Lessons from Subversion to Jujutsu

Evergreen Git, Evolving UX: 20 Years of Lessons from Subversion to Jujutsu

TBD

TBD

September 30th

Getting to Git Merge

Event details

Travel and lodging