Almost every piece of computer software is created using source code. When creators release their product, they must choose whether it is “open source” or “closed source”. With closed source, people have no access to the source code whereas open-source software (OSS) grants access to the code and allows people to modify and distribute it at their convenience. Among the large variety of OSS, many are free and can be improved by adding extra costing features. One of most popular of them is Git, distributed under GNU General Public License Version 2 and used by more than 12 million people. It was created by Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, in 2005 for development of the Linux kerne.
Originally designed for coordinating work among programmers cooperating on source code during software development, Git is a distributed version-control system (VCS) that eases tracking changes in any set of files. For instance, after editing a file Git will help you to determine what exactly changed, who changed it and why, making it a very powerful tool to trace progress overtime or coordinate computing projects with many developers. Furthermore, Git allows users to stop keeping many copies of files in order to modify them. Instead, they must create different branches, make changes on these branches and commit them. These commits are “snapshots” of the differences made to the system at a given point in time. The changes will then appear directly on a trunk and a record of each of their commits and changes will be kept. In a word, Git is a software that allows to annotate the history of a system or a set of files by submitting it.
When it comes to work on files from multiple computers, GitHub becomes essential. Often confused with Git, GitHub is a website that use Git and provide Internet hosting for software development and version control. GitHub has in recent years become the world’s biggest collection of open-source software. Working like a cloud, GitHub stores all the commit history of Git on the Internet so you can access it from any device. You push commits to GitHub from local computer and then pull those commits from a new computer. In this way, GitHub is like an online folder that saves all your changes.
During team coordination, to prevent one’s work from overlapping, creating branches through Git is very helpful. Everyone can then work on the branch they pull, and all the branches can be merged into the trunk when the work is over. In fact, the branch snapshot is added to the trunk snapshot. However, carefulness is needed because once new branches are merged, previous content of the trunk will be overwritten.
Git allows users to create various versions of their work on their own computer without requiring any internet connection. However when one is suitable, GitHub online plateform helps to store histories and ease teamwork. Therefore, a wise combination of Git and GitHub can make computing project a lot easier and clearer while increasing global efficiency. If you want to start managing your project through Git and GitHub, please don’t hesitate to search for more operational documents. Real knowledge comes from practice!
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Great content! Keep up the good work!