About Distributed Version Control

They are all central repository version control model

One Central space

Check out the master repository -> work with it and make changes -> submit those changes back to the central repository

Git is Distributed version control

: different users (or teams of users) maintain their own repositories instead of working from a central repository

: Their changes are stored as "change sets" or "patches"

: Tracks changes not versions

: different from CVS and SVN which track versions

: Change sets can be exchanged between repositories

: No single master repository; just many working copies (Each with their own combination of change sets)

Ex) Imagine changes to a document as sets A, B, C, D, E, F

- Repo 1: A, B, C, D, E, F

- Repo 2: A, B, C, D

- Repo 3: A, B, C, E

- Repo 4: A, B, E, F

: No central repository just change sets.

: No need to communicate with central server (Faster, No network access required, No single failure point)

: Encourages participation and forking of projects (Developers can work independently, Submit change sets for inclusion or rejection)

Who should use Git?

: anyone wanting to track edits

- review a history log or changes made

- view differences between versions

- retrieve old versions

: anyone needing to share changes with collaborators

: anyone not afraid of command-line tools

Not as useful for tracking non-text files (images, movies, music, fonts..), Word processing files, spreadsheets, PDFs..