Git for Engineers — The Complete Guide: Free Version Control for Scripts, Models and Documents
Git is an open-source version control tool: it keeps a history of every change to the files in a project folder — who changed what and when — and lets you go back to any point. It is standard in software, but it also solves a familiar engineering problem: dozens of files named “final_v3_new”.
Git
Git project
Version control for code, scripts and input files — who changed what and when, and return to any version.
Get it from the vendorWhat is worth managing in Git
- Scripts and calculations — Python code, JupyterLab notebooks and calculation sheets written as code.
- Input files — for FEM, hydraulics and simulation programs, which are text files.
- Text-based documents — LaTeX, Markdown, Typst — where you see exactly which lines changed.
- Parametric models in code — such as OpenSCAD.
Git works less well with large binary files (DWG, CAD models, Excel): it stores them but cannot show differences, and the repository grows. For such files there is the Git LFS extension, or ordinary backup.
Getting started
Install Git and run git init in the project folder. At each important point: git add . and then git commit -m 'describe the change'. If you prefer a graphical interface, use Git from VSCodium, which shows changes in colour and lets you commit with one click. For backup and sharing, push the repository to a server such as GitHub or GitLab, or to an internal server.
VSCodium
VSCodium project
The VS Code editor as a fully open build — Python, MATLAB, C, Markdown and more, without telemetry.
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Python
Python Software Foundation
The language behind most modern engineering computation, and its full ecosystem.
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JupyterLab
Project Jupyter
Interactive computing notebooks — code, results, plots and explanations in one shareable document.
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Notepad++
Don Ho
A light text and code editor for Windows — input files for analysis programs, data files and scripts.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
Git takes an hour to learn the basics, and pays back the first time you need to know what changed in a calculation a month ago. Completely free, on every operating system.