Learning the basics of the distributed version control system Git

Using a distributed version control system is so natural nowadays that if you are reading this book, you are probably already using one. However, if you aren't, read this recipe carefully. You should always use a version control system for your code.

Getting ready

Notable distributed version control systems include Git, Mercurial, and Bazaar. In this chapter, we chose the popular Git system. You can download the Git program and Git GUI clients from http://git-scm.com. On Windows, you can also install msysGit (http://msysgit.github.io) and TortoiseGit (https://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/).

Note

Distributed systems tend to be more popular than centralized systems such as SVN or CVS. Distributed systems allow local (offline) changes and offer more flexible collaboration systems.

Online providers supporting Git include GitHub (https://github.com), Bitbucket (https://bitbucket.org), Google code (https://code.google.com), Gitorious...