Git Workflow for FTC Teams

Why Git Workflow for FTC Teams matters

This lesson is part of the team workflow layer, where code quality becomes a competition habit. The point is to make programming choices visible, reviewable, and recoverable when students are tired or under event pressure.

Starting point

Version control protects working robot code

FTC teams move fast under pressure. Git lets students try changes without losing the last known working version, and it creates a record of what changed before an event.

Small commits are easier to review

A commit like feat: add arm PID is more useful than changed stuff. Students should group related changes and explain the robot behavior they affected.

Build path

Practice the workflow in small loops: make a change, describe it, test it, record the result, and decide whether it is safe to keep. The lesson should produce a team artifact such as a checklist, branch, commit, tuning note, or debug log.

For this specific lesson, students should first restate the goal in robot terms, then identify the value or behavior they expect to observe, then run the smallest test that proves the idea. The lesson should feel like a guided lab: predict, run, observe, explain, and only then extend.

Debugging and failure modes

Workflow breaks when knowledge lives only in one student's head. If nobody knows what changed, what was tested, or what code is deployed, the robot becomes fragile. The lesson should make the next action obvious to another teammate.