Linus Torvalds recently gave a presentation at Google about a new source-control management (SCM) system he has authored and that is being actively maintained by an open-source community - Git.

If you are a happy user of Subversion, you should take a break right now and watch the video (if you are a “happy” user of CVS, you are hopeless), because it will change and broaden your thinking. Git is not just another version control, it is fundamentally different the way it works.

And it is better! But, how? Ask yourself some questions about your current SCM:

  • Do you commit every day? Should you?
  • Can you commit if you are offline?
  • Do you use branches?
  • Do you look forward to merging branches?
  • Do you need to have guidelines about naming branches/tags?
  • What if your SCM server’s disk died?

 

Now imagine that you have a system where none of these questions give you a shiver. That would be Git.

Linus, once again - you rock!