My Git

Randall
Fri, 04 Dec 2009 22:32:43 +0000

A few days back I ordered a copy of Scott Chacon's book: Pro Git, which I am really enjoying reading. Scott is an excellent writer, and really does justice to Git. I was reflecting on his enthusiasm, and thinking about my own. Here are my thoughts on Git, and my experience with it over the years.

I started using Git around 2 years ago when I saw a screencast discussing it online. What initially drew me to Git was that it was created by Linus (who was very enthusiastic about it), and that my previous experiences with version control systems (VCS) were horrible. Naturally, I wanted to give it a try, and get back to the best-practices way of doing things (using a VCS).

When I first learned about VCSs, pretty much everyone used SVN or CVS. When I researched them both, there was no doubt in my mind that SVN was clearly the most popular, and so that's what I decided to learn. I started using SVN for all of my code (most of it was hosted on Sourceforge at some point or another), and learned it well enough to push periodic updates to my projects and do basic collaboration with a few other people.

However, I never really liked SVN. It was always slow and time consuming to perform commits (something that you should do extremely frequently), so I just stopped doing them often. This got me into the bad habit of only performing a commit for a release, something that is definitely frowned upon, and completely nullifies any benefits that you get from using a VCS in the first place! To make the situation even worse: at the time, a good portion of the code I was writing was offline. This meant that I was unable to make commits when working on my code, as without an internet connection I couldn't connect to the remote repository.

Using SVN also imposed limits on my work with others. A lot of the projects I worked on required collaboration with several other people. Using SVN slowed the process down. Performing merges, managing access rights, and doing SVN updates always took a lot of time. Also, if the SVN repository was down, it meant that nobody could access the source or project history, which made team effort difficult.

The other large issue I had (and still have) with SVN is that there are no good project hosting websites out there which meet my needs. Sourceforge, which is probably the largest and most popular SVN project hosting site is slow, filled with ads, and has an un-intuitive interface. It also requires approval for every project which can sometimes take hours. What I want in a project hosting site is something that:

Has a clean and pretty interface with no (or few) ads.

Allows developers to instantly create a new project and get to work.

Makes managing access rights and collaboration simple.

Allows private projects, which are necessary for proprietary code.

Has an issue tracker for each project, which allows advanced categorization of bugs and fixes. Something that makes it easy for both users to submit issues (and propose fixes), and developers to close bugs and keep it organized.

Allows you to store large projects and releases.

Has a pretty source viewer so that users can casually browse any version of your source code through a simple navigation window, and can permalink to any piece of code at their whim.

Allows users to embed snippets of code in their web pages for display on other sites.

Has pretty URLs, none of that ?p=155 stuff.

Has a wiki system that looks nice and is simple to navigate for users.

Has detailed graphs and statistics for each project.

Has some sort of 'watch' or 'follow' functionality which allows users to monitor the status of a project over time.

Enter Git. Git felt like it was designed for me.

As a developer who works on many projects small and large, I need a VCS which will be as flexible as I am.

Git is fully distributed, so no matter where I am or how many people are working on a project, I always have complete access to all revisions of the source. There are no file deltas (Git stores the entire file), and I can instantly see what the source looked like at any given time in the project's history whether I'm online or offline. This gives me the flexibility to get work done wherever I am, whether it be on a plane, at the beach, or in the park. When you perform commits in Git, the files are checked into your local repository. Once you have internet access, you can push to your remote repository and add your full history straight into the project as if you were online the entire time.

Git also makes collaboration a simple process. I don't have to manage a Git database and allow access to certain users: when someone makes a patch or adds code, they can simply link me to their Git repository, and I can merge it into the project at my leisure. This has the added benefit of being able to see all of the source contributer's history in my project once I have merged the branches together. This makes working with other people extremely easy and reduces the hassle of managing a large monolithic SVN repository.

Git also handles merging and re-basing beautifully. When conflicts arise I am notified, and the current working revision is put on hold until these errors are fixed or stashed. Git adds the appropriate conflict information to my files so I can see exactly what is conflicting, and how it needs to be changed to progress.

Lastly, Git has an great community, and Github. Github is the ultimate project hosting site. You can create projects instantly and store large files. You can also store all of your SSH keys for the various systems you work on, thereby showing different commit users and / or messages. Github has a simple and intuitive web interface which looks great, and has clean functionality for users, developers, and people exploring the site.

The Github source viewer is nice as well. It lets you browse the entire history of the project, you can see a full snapshot of exactly what the source looked like at any given time. It also allows you to get a direct permalink to any particular source file from any revision in the project's history. This is extremely useful for source review and any sort of online publishing / collaboration tools.

One of my favorite Github features is the ability to instantly 'fork' a project. Forking a project is extremely easy, simply click the 'fork' button on the project you'd like to fork. Github will instantly copy the projects source / history to your account, and automatically create your own Git repository for the project which you can change and modify all you like. This is very useful, as if you see a project you'd like to make a patch for, you can fork it, make the patch, and link the real project owner to your forked repository, where they can then merge in your changes! It's also useful for people who just want to make their own modifications to a project. Github's forking provides an elegant solution to a common problem.

Yet another nice feature of Github is it's social networking type feel. Every account can 'watch projects', send private messages, add and remove friends, and get instant updates when your friends add / remove code to their projects. Github is also releasing a resume searching tool on their site at some point in the near future, and they have already implemented resume pages for each user who wishes to add to them. This means that in addition to providing project hosting, they'll also be able to help companies find talented programmers based on their actual work!

Github also has many other neat features including a wiki system, statistics system for gathering project stats, and a language browsing feature which makes finding new projects in your favorite programming languages fun.

Since learning Git, and discovering all the nice features that it offers (in addition to the general awesomeness of Github), I think that I've definitely become a better programmer. Git has helped me remedy my bad habits by making the committing and merging systems thoughtless, and has given me the ability to really get the most out of my coding experiences. Git has also made running an contributing to open source projects fun again, and that what it is all about.