Using Git for source control

Git has become a popular choice for source control as an alternative to the classical centralized source control approach. Originating in the open source world for use in development of the Linux kernel, it has since spread in the software development world to be used on a variety of platforms.

While Git has been available for Windows as a standalone tool for several years, shortly after the release of Visual Studio 2012, Microsoft formally supported Git via the second update to VS2012. With Visual Studio 2013, Git support is built-in and readily available for use with your projects.

The basic concept of Git is that it takes the approach of decentralized source control. Rather than having a central server that serves as the sole repository, Git facilitates distributed repositories. In practice, this means that each developer can have a full copy of the repository on their local developer machine. Developers can perform their normal workflow of code editing, compiling...