What is Git?
Git is a decentralized, open source version control software created in 2005 by Linus Torvalds. It allows you to track changes made to a file or project and optionally share these changes on a remote server. Git is usually used with the GitHub or GitLab services. These are cloud directory hosting services (repository). Therefore, the versions of a project will be stored on this platform. It is also there where collaboration with other users of the platform is available.
Git software is the most popular and widely used version manager. Since it is decentralized, the code is also saved locally. It is mostly used by developers, but that does not prevent its use from being diverted for other purposes. For example, a writer can use it to write his book and easily keep track of changes he makes.
How does Git Software work?
Version management software, especially from Git, is important during the lifecycle of a project. Here we will consider the design of a website. The design of a website comes before its uploading. During the designing, making several changes to the website code is obvious before getting the final website. If, however, an error or a bug occurs after an edition of the code, it is beneficial for the developer to be able to recover the previous version of his website or to be able to easily determine what modifications were made. Otherwise, long work awaits him.
This is where Git software comes in. It makes it possible to make available different versions of a project (of a code) as and when it is modified. So if several people are working on the same project, each of them will easily know which revisions have taken place and the author of the revisions. In order to accomplish this task, Git relies on the contents of the file to differentiate it from another. Unlike the machine which relies on the name of the file to distinguish it. Roughly speaking, Git considers two files with different names but the same content to be the same file.
Git is available on cPanel hosting plans or on VPS servers with cPanel.
Why do you need to use Git?
- It can easily repair errors without wasting time. Since Git preserves multiple versions of a project, rolling back is quick in the event of an error.
- It facilitates collaborative work and helps prevent data loss. In the case of a collaborative project, each participant has a global view of the changes made by the others.
- It allows offline work. Since all code is both online and on the desktop, the user can continue development wherever they are, online or not.
- It facilitates posting a website on another server. When changing your web hosting plan, it will suffice to clone the website on the new server.
Other version control software exists such as Bazaar, Mercurial in the open source world and ClearCase or Synergy as proprietary software.