Today, we are discussing the Difference Between Git and GitHub? Before this lets understand what is Git and GitHub.
GIT:
Git is a DevOps tool used for source code management. It is one of the most prominent version control systems (VCS) today that is widely used to handle small and large projects efficiently. It helps in tracking changes in source code, enabling different people to collaborate on different parts of the same program.
Git is a version control system for tracking changes in computer files. It helps in coordinating work amongst several people in a project and tracks progress over time. Unlike the centralized version control system, Git branches can be easily merged. A new branch is created every time a developer wants to start working on something. This ensures that the master branch always has a production-quality code.
Git is a distributed version control system, so here, every developer gets their local repository with full commit history. The commit history makes Git fast, as now a network connection is not needed to create commits or perform diffs between commits.
Git is an open source distributed version control system created in 2005 by Linus Torvalds and others from the Linux development community. Git can work with many types of projects, but it’s most commonly used for software source code.
Git is foundation of many services like GitHub and GitLab, but we can use Git without using any other Git services. Git can be used privately and publicly.
Git is easy to learn, and has fast performance. It is superior to other SCM tools like Subversion, CVS, Perforce, and ClearCase.
Advantages of Git
- Free and open source:
Git is released under GPL’s open source license. It is available freely over the internet. You can use Git to manage property projects without paying a single penny. As it is an open source, you can download its source code and also perform changes according to your requirements.
- Fast and small:
As most of the operations are performed locally, it gives a huge benefit in terms of speed. Git does not rely on the central server; that is why, there is no need to interact with the remote server for every operation. The core part of Git is written in C, which avoids runtime overheads associated with other high-level languages. Though Git mirrors entire repository, the size of the data on the client side is small. This illustrates the efficiency of Git at compressing and storing data on the client side.
- Implicit backup:
The chances of losing data are very rare when there are multiple copies of it. Data present on any client side mirrors the repository, hence it can be used in the event of a crash or disk corruption.
- Security.
Git uses a common cryptographic hash function called secure hash function (SHA1), to name and identify objects within its database. Every file and commit is check-summed and retrieved by its checksum at the time of checkout. It implies that, it is impossible to change file, date, and commit message and any other data from the Git database without knowing Git.
- No need of powerful hardware:
In case of CVCS, the central server needs to be powerful enough to serve requests of the entire team. For smaller teams, it is not an issue, but as the team size grows, the hardware limitations of the server can be a performance bottleneck. In case of DVCS, developers don’t interact with the server unless they need to push or pull changes. All the heavy lifting happens on the client side, so the server hardware can be very simple indeed.
- Easier branching:
CVCS uses cheap copy mechanism, If we create a new branch, it will copy all the codes to the new branch, so it is time-consuming and not efficient. Also, deletion and merging of branches in CVCS is complicated and time-consuming. But branch management with Git is very simple. It takes only a few seconds to create, delete, and merge branches.
Benefits of Git:
Some significant benefits of using Git are as follows:
- Saves Time:
Git is lightning fast technology. Each command takes only a few seconds to execute so we can save a lot of time as compared to login to a GitHub account and find out its features.
- Offline Working:
One of the most important benefits of Git is that it supports offline working. If we are facing internet connectivity issues, it will not affect our work. In Git, we can do almost everything locally. Comparatively, other CVS like SVN is limited and prefer the connection with the central repository.
- Undo Mistakes:
One additional benefit of Git is we can Undo mistakes. Sometimes the undo can be a savior option for us. Git provides the undo option for almost everything.
- Track the Changes:
Git facilitates with some exciting features such as Diff, Log, and Status, which allows us to track changes so we can check the status, compare our files or branches.
GitHub:
GitHub is a Git repository hosting service. GitHub also facilitates with many of its features, such as access control and collaboration. It provides a Web-based graphical interface.
GitHub is an American company. It hosts source code of your project in the form of different programming languages and keeps track of the various changes made by programmers.
It offers both distributed version control and source code management (SCM) functionality of Git. It also facilitates with some collaboration features such as bug tracking, feature requests, task management for every project.
GitHub is one of the world’s largest community of developers. It’s an intricate platform that fosters collaboration and communication between developers. GitHub has a number of useful features that enable development teams to work together on the same project and easily create new versions of software without disrupting the current versions, but it doesn’t stop there.
Once new additions to a program are complete, for example, they can easily be incorporated into existing programs. GitHub also makes it extremely simple to work together on strings of code to really dial in and perfect even the smallest parts of a program. With GitHub, you can collaborate and work on projects with others anywhere in the world.
Features of GitHub
GitHub is a place where programmers and designers work together. They collaborate, contribute, and fix bugs together. It hosts plenty of open source projects and codes of various programming languages.
Some of its significant features are as follows.
- Collaboration
- Integrated issue and bug tracking
- Graphical representation of branches
- Git repositories hosting
- Project management
- Team management
- Code hosting
- Track and assign tasks
- Conversations
- Wikisc
Benefits of GitHub
GitHub can be separated as the Git and the Hub. GitHub service includes access controls as well as collaboration features like task management, repository hosting, and team management.
The key benefits of GitHub are as follows.
- It is easy to contribute to open source projects via GitHub.
- It helps to create an excellent document.
- You can attract recruiter by showing off your work. If you have a profile on GitHub, you will have a higher chance of being recruited.
- It allows your work to get out there in front of the public.
- You can track changes in your code across versions.
Difference Between Git and GitHub:
We understood the basic of git and github. Now let see the difference between Git and GitHub.
| No | Git | GitHub |
| 1. | Git is a software. | GitHub is a service. |
| 2. | Git is a command-line tool | GitHub is a graphical user interface |
| 3. | Git is installed locally on the system | GitHub is hosted on the web |
| 4. | Git is maintained by linux. | GitHub is maintained by microsoft. |
| 5. | Git is focused on version control and code sharing. | GitHub is focused on centralized source code hosting. |
| 6. | Git is a version control system to manage source code history. | GitHub is a hosting service for Git repositories. |
| 7. | Git was first released in 2005. | GitHub was launched in 2008. |
| 8. | Git has no user management feature. | GitHub has built-in user management feature. |