What is GIT? If you’re looking for a version-control tool with the functionality, performance, security, and flexibility most teams and individual developers need, then Git is a great option.
It serves as an important distributed version-control DevOps tool and has a wide array of great features like inline diff, code review, and numerous ways to work together on a project.
| Post On: | What is GIT? |
| Post Type: | GIT Tutorial |
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What is Git – Why Git Came Into Existence?
If you’re familiar with the saying “Necessity is the mother of all inventions,” In a similar way, Git was invented to address certain needs that developers faced before Git existed.
What Is Git?
Git is a version control tool that allows for distributed non-linear workflows. This means that it can keep track of changes to software development projects, even when multiple people are working on them simultaneously. Git also provides data assurance, a means of backing up file system changes and workflows.
What is Git – Features Of Git
- Free and open source: You can download and use Git for free, as it is released under the GPL (General Public License) open source license. You are also able to modify the source code to suit your needs better.
- Speed: Git is a fast version control system because it does not have to connect to any network to perform all operations. Also, the core part of Git is written in C, which avoids runtime overheads associated with other high-level languages.
- Reliable: Since each contributor has their own local repository, lost data can be recovered from any of the local repositories if the system crashes. You will always have a backup of all your files.
- Scalable: If the number of collaborators on a project increases in the future, Git will be able to handle it easily due to its scalability. Even though Git stores data for an entire repository, the amount of data stored locally on each client is very small because Git uses lossless compression to reduce the size of data.
- Economical: If you are using a Centralized Version Control System, the central server will need to be powerful enough to handle the requests of your entire team. For smaller teams, this is not usually an issue, but as team size grows, the hardware limitations of the server can become a performance bottleneck. If you are using a Distributed Version Control System, developers do not interact with the server unless they need to push or pull changes. All of the heavy lifting happens on the client side so that the server hardware can be very simple.
- Secure: The SHA1 Secure Hash Function is used by Git to name and identify objects in its repository. Every file and commit has a checksum that is retrieved when the file or commit is checked out. The history of each file or commit in Git depends on the development history leading up to that particular version (commit). Once it is published, any attempt to change old versions will be noticed.
- Supports non-linear development: Git allows branches to be created quickly and easily, which is useful when changes need to be made and reviewed frequently. The assumption that a change will more often than not be merged rather than written makes it easier for developers to work on the same project simultaneously without having too many conflicts.
- Easy Branching: Git makes it very easy to manage branches – it only takes a few seconds to create, delete, and merge them. Feature branches allow developers to have an isolated environment for every change they make to the codebase. Whenever a developer wants to start working on something new, regardless of size, they create a new branch. This ensures that the master branch always has code that is ready for production.
- Compatibility with existing systems or protocols: Repositories can be published in a few different ways: HTTP, FTP, or Git protocol over either a plain socket or SSH. You can also use existing CVS clients and IDE plugins to access Git repositories because Git has Concurrent Version Systems (CVS) server emulation. Lastly, Apache SubVersion (SVN) and SVK repositories can be used directly with Git-SVN.
- Distributed development: Git allows each developer to have a local copy of the entire development history, and changes can be copied from one repository to another. These changes are imported as additional development branches and can be merged like a locally developed branch.
Who uses Git? – Popular Companies Using Git
Git is much more popular than other version control tools available in the market, like Apache Subversion (SVN), Concurrent Version Systems (CVS), and Mercurial. In large companies, developers located all around the world generally develop products. To enable communication among them, Git is the solution.
Conclusion:
I hope this blog helped you understand Git. In this article, you will learn about several aspects of Git technology. The detailed descriptions in this article will give you an overview of such a system.
