Today, we are discussing the Difference Between Git and SVN? Before this lets understand what is Git and SVN.
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.
SVN:
Apache Subversion or SVN is one of the most popular centralized version control systems. Now, SVN’s popularity is on the decrease, but there are still millions of projects stored in it. It can continue to be actively maintained by an open-source community. In SVN, you can check out a single version of the repository. It stores data in a central server. The drawback of the SVN is, it has the entire history on a local repository which limits you. You can only do commits, diffs, logs, branches, merges, file annotations, etc.
While, Git is a popular distributed version control system, which means that you can clone your repository. Thus you can get a complete copy of your entire history of that project. This means you can access all your commits.
Git has more advantages than SVN. It is much better for those developers who are not always connected to the master repository. Also, it is much faster than SVN.
Difference between Git and SVN:
Below is a table of differences between GIT and SVN:
| GIT | SVN |
| Git is open source distributed vice control system developed by Linus Torvalds in 2005. It emphasis on speed and data integrity | Apache Subversion is an open source software version and revision control system under Apache license. |
| Git has a Distributed Model. | SVN has a Centralized Model. |
| Git is an SCM (source code management). | SVN is revision control. |
| Linus Torvalds developed git for Linux kernel. | CollabNet, Inc developed SVN. |
| Git is distributed under GNU (General public license). | SVN is distributed under the open-source license. |
| In git every user has their own copy of code on their local like their own branch. | In SVN there is central repository has working copy that also make changes and committed in central repository. |
| In git we do not required any Network to perform git operation. | In SVN we required Network for runs the SVN operation. |
| Git is more difficult to learn. It has more concepts and commands. | SVN is much easier to learn as compared to git. |
| Git deals with large number of files like binary files that change quickly that why it become slow. | SVN control the large number of binary files easily. |
| In git we create only .git directory. | In SVN we create .svn directory in each folder. |
| It does not not have good UI as compared to SVN. | SVN has simple and better user interface . |
| Features of GIT:
· Distributed System. · Branching. · Compatibility. · Non-linear Development. · Lightweight. · Open source. |
Features of SVN:
· Directories are versioned · Copying, deleting, and renaming. · Free-form versioned metadata . · Atomic commits. · Branching and tagging. · Merge tracking. · File locking. |