Tuesday, August 27, 2013

A Little Love For Git

When I last wrote about git (and distributed version control in general) I wasn't impressed. Sure, it's an absolutely valid version control choice, but not one I was abandoning subversion for with the same absoluteness that I dumped RCS and CVS. To me, it seemed like the unstated argument for using git was a fair amount of "oooh, it's newer and more complicated, so it's got to be better."

The last few weeks, however, I've been using git in a project and I'm finding myself a whole heck of a lot more impressed. Finally, it feels like I'm not just using it as a more complicated version of subversion. The part that I'm especially digging is how lightweight a git repository is. I'm working with another development team on this project, and I'm finding an unusual degree of elegance in being able to stage my own commits in a local repository before pushing it to the master. I am also impressed with how easily I'm able to create and move around repositories; for example, effortlessly turning a local repository of mine into one that's accessible remotely. I can't even claim I fully understand all the git push / pull options when it comes to work with other repositories; but my gut tells me there's something special here.

This simplicity and flexibility in the distributed repository model is just too cool for my hacking instincts to ignore.

I'm hardly a convert, Subversion is still my preference for source management on the projects I work on. Still, I've got to give props where props are due.

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