I have always heard good things about Git, how its solves a lot of problem other version control system have along with being very fast. Sadly, at my past jobs, we only used SVN and never really had good workflow as the developers would all work on separate projects.  I started looking into Git on and off, it’s hard to fully learn something you know that you are not going to be able to use in your group. Due to the blog, I wanted some better way to share my code with people so they can use it or update without needing to come to the blog and copy and paste. With blog being an element of social sharing GitHub comes in mind for being social coding. I have started to move all my code onto github to be able to better share with people and give myself an opportunity to use Git.

GitHub is great, even without fully knowing the ins and outs of Git. They help you along to a point where you are able to push your code to your repository and start sharing with others. The web interface is laid out nicely and you are able to get up and running in no time. GitHub is free as long as you have an open source public repository which for sharing code from my blog is perfect and gives you a nice taste of their service before you buy a plan from them. Looking at the price, it doesn’t seem to be too much money. If you are looking to using Git and want an offsite backup of your code I would recommend checking out GitHub. They have a nice list of projects being hosted already, like PostgreSQL, Ruby, Ruby on Rails and Linux Kernel.

At the same time of me signing up for GitHub, O’Reilly had a discount on the “McCullough and Berglund on Mastering Git” videos. Kind of a perfect timing thing if you ask me. The videos have ton of good information in them, from getting you all setup with Git to branching, tagging and merging. After watching the video you should have a good understanding of how to start using Git and how it can help your day to day workflow.  The videos will also show you how Git can do things that other version control systems would take a lot more work to do the same thing. I did kind of find some parts of the video cheesy, kind of like a radio show where they are trying to keep things entertaining by trying to shock or lead you on. Beside that, the information from the video is great and the examples are useful and would simulate what you would do day to day. Its nice to also see them using GitHub for their demo but they let you know that you don’t need a remote hosting to be able to use Git. If you really want to get into using Git I would check out the “Mastering Git” videos from O’Reilly.

To me, Git is more then just about version control system, it’s also about workflow and code quality. I can see a tool like Git being able to take a development team to the next level and help order things to ensure good workflow and help to improve code quality. I’m hoping I will be able to convince my employer to take a look at Git and see if they would find it beneficial to switch over. A good site to take a look at and maybe pass around is “Why Git is Better than X” they seem to have some good details of Git vs other version control system.

Here is a link to my repository on GitHub, https://github.com/amscotti/128bitstudios still working on pushing out some code and a better readme but all the code is open source and is under GPL. If you have any updates that you want to me pull, just send me a heads up! Other wise enjoy!

I would love to hear about peoples opinions of Git, why they love or hate it and any stories of their team switching over to Git from some other version control system. Feel free to write up a comment or send me a email!