I’m really excited about Git — a newish revision control system. I’ve seen it growing in popularity over the last few years but hadn’t used it until just recently.

Unlike Subversion which I’ve really enjoyed using, it’s decentralized, meaning that each “local” copy is in fact a full repository with all changes. There are quite a few advantages with regards to merging and branching and some of the concepts seem to have been well-thought-out rather than simply inherited from earlier revision control system designs. It’s written my Linus Torvalds — Mr. Linux himself. There are still some issues with it and the biggest issue is that it’s simply not as well supported yet with regards to tools. I hope that soon we’ll see better support on Windows (a necessary evil) and some slicker/easier Gui front-ends.

For now, I’m considering moving over to this for personal use and maybe sneaking it in at work. If you haven’t used it yet, I encourage you to check it out. Here‘s a transcript of a talk from Linus talking about Git, Subversion, and revision control systems in general and here‘s the Wikipedia page on Git. I think that it very much depends on your situation whether a decentralized or centralized repository is the way to go, but I think that often, Git will be a good solution.

Update: Here’s a video of the talk.