Git vs subversion how to#
Git vs subversion Offline#

Git vs subversion how to#

Even the fact that you can go back in time is something you should know how to do and can be valuable to your or your employer. Totally disagree :-D Getting source control right (be it subversion or git or whatever) is very important. Git's UI admittedly isn't great but you can use a few aliases to make your life better. I don't think I know more than half of what git is capable of and I'm able to work with it every day. The most complicated thing about Git is rebasing but even that is not rocket science, you just need to read a decent tutorial about it and keep practicing (the fact that it should be infinitely simpler is a given) Three reasons: most open source projects are on github, the herd effect and because it's not that complicated in the day to day. So why do companies keep switching from SVN to Git and not the other way round? You could add more items to this list, for example the cryptic command line interface of Git or the possibility to modify history.

Git vs subversion Offline#

But then, who really needs distributed version control? Is being able to work offline really such a big deal nowadays? I understand that in a distributed version control system, a numbering scheme like in SVN is not possible. In SVN, commits have simple consecutive numbers while in Git there are 40 digit hashes. It definitely adds complexity to her life. While all of this makes sense theoretically, it gives the developer a lot of things to keep in mind. There is also a staging area and a stash. A local one and potentially multiple remote ones. That's easy to understand and there is a single source of truth. In SVN there is your local data and a central repository. When comparing SVN with Git, it is pretty safe to say that the latter is much more complex. And of course as an employer you don't want the precious time of your developers to be spent on non productive stuff. It is something that should more or less happen in the background. Of course they are aware that it is neccessary but they want to interact with it as little as possible and focus on their actual work instead. Most professional developers, including myself, are not really interested in version control. I like to take the discussion to a more pragmatic level.

So what makes me ask this question anyway? Most discussions compare certain technical aspects in detail but do not ask how relevant these actually are. The pros and cons of Git and SVN have been discussed abundantly for many years.