There is a need to keep track of your and your teamwork on an almost continuous basis in the modern work environment. So there is a need for a tool to do precisely that. To the rescue comes Git – a distributed version control system. In this article, we will speak about the benefits of Git and why you should use Git in general.
What is Git
Let’s start by explaining what Git even is, and in short, explain how it works for your benefit.
Git is the most famous version control system nowadays, gathering nearly 70% of the market. It is a tool developed to help you track changes created by your team on your project. It allows for greater team collaboration, but more on that later.
Git is mainly a local tool, but the extension of online Git hosting repositories like GitHub or BitBucket simplifies maintaining your repositories. Reasons to switching to Git
Let’s now discuss the advantages of Git, how it can influence workflow in your company, and how it can help your work as a whole. So there are the following reasons why you might consider switching to Git.
One of the most important benefits of using Git is a distributed version control system. Everyone working on the same project has a local copy of the entire repository and can work remotely and independently. All is possible on the local machine, creating a commit, browsing the project’s history, managing branches. If you want to work remotely without access to the internet, Git allows you to do all the work, whenever you want, and wherever you want.
The way distributed version control works brings many more benefits, for example, a faster release cycle or even faster work in general. As they create branches, work remotely, pull requests, speed up the process of creating software, developers can push more minor changes more frequently, resulting in saved time on the project development and better scalability.
During the development process, sometimes developers make mistakes, and we can do nothing about it, but Git provides tools to make something from those mistakes and undo those mistakes. Git provides an undo command for practically any situation. You could correct the last commit if you forgot to include a small change. You can revert a commit if the changes are not needed anymore. And you can restore deleted commits, as Git keeps track of all the history.
Git allows you to create granular commits; you can track exactly what changes you are making and what you are putting into the next commit. It helps to avoid creating a mess of code pushed to the central repository and, overall, improves the quality of work on a project.
Many teams are working on software development and many ways to do so. Git allows you to create and use your own established workflow. Whether you want to use many branches or forks or work on a single repository, you can do so, as Git is very flexible. If you want to read more about workflows in Git, check out this article.
Why is GitHub so popular?
GitHub is currently the most popular git repository hosting service globally, with over 56 million users. The reason is the ability to host as many git repositories (private repos and public repos) as you want in the cloud, and many more benefits available for a free user. When it comes to GitHub and the benefits of Git within, the service simplifies maintaining the repositories. Instead of using git commands, you can use the GitHub graphical interface.
But GitHub isn’t the only git repository hosting service.
Conclusion
There are many advantages of Git for practically any software project. So to answer the question: why should I use Git? To speed up the development process, simplify team integration, to keep track of all the changes to the project, there are many more git advantages. But there is an important thing to remember, even though Git gives some level of protection for your repositories, it should never be considered a proper backup of your data. An appropriate measure of security for your git repositories is GitProtect.io.