Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 1
Getting Started with Git
The manufacturers of computer software are facing difficult challenges caused by quite
trivial reasons. A typical application is produced by a team of developers working on
hundreds, if not thousands, of files on a short schedule. Each file needs to be available
for modification by all of the developers at any moment. The situation is complicated
even more when we supplement the scenario with the time line. Every file can be modi-
fied by any developer at any chosen moment. The following three simple factors make
the management of a source code a nontrivial task:
• The number of files
• The number of developers
• The time line
These problems have been known for many years, and as you might expect, there are
various software tools that make group work on text files a lot of easier. These tools are
commonly referred to as
version control software
or
revision control software
. And git
belongs to this family.
What is git?
Git is a distributed version control system created to support the development of a Linux
kernel. It was started in April 2005 by Linus Torvalds and is now maintained by Junio
C. Hamano.
The main features that set git apart among other version control systems are:
