Before discussing Git and GitHub, you have to know about Version Control Systems.
What is a Version Control System?
Version Control Systems AKA Source Control Systems is a set of software tools used in software development to track and manage the code changes and modifications over time by keeping the changes' history. It will be instrumental when it comes to error debugging and working as a development team. It will make the development process lot faster and make developers easy to go to previous versions of the source code in case of a bug. It will ensure a successful project deployment.
Why is Version Control important?
- Modification history of the source code over the development stage and after stages can be kept easily using VCS. It will ease the developers' job to debug bugs or go to previous versions of the code with less effort.
- Team working becomes efficient with VCS. Developers always work as a development group, and each member is responsible for separate tasks of a large project. VCS has a branch feature; using branches, developers can separately perform their tasks and merge them with the main branch. Group collaboration and communications are improved with VSC in software project management.
- It acts as file storage. In case of files loss in you can get the files from the remote repository. This is an added advantage of the VCS.
Main there are two parts of the Version Control System.
- Local Repository - Local Repository is the working directory of your personal computer.
- Remote Repository - Repository that is hosted on the internet of another network
Git, CVS, SVN, Mercurial, Monotone, Bazaar, TFS are some Version Control Systems available. Git is the most popular Version Control System.
VCS made the life of software developers a lot easy. Now let's see what Git and GitHub are.
What is Git?
Git is an open-source and free Version Control System. It is the most popular VCS right now. Git is developed in 2005 by Linus Torvalds, the person who created the Linux OS Kernal. Git uses the Distributed Version Control System architecture. Performance, security, feature set compared to other VCS are the reasons to become Git more popular.
Git has its own set of commands to performs tasks like adding files to the repository, commit changes, adding files to the remote repository, getting back files from the remote repository, create/merge/delete branches, etc...
There are many web-hosted VSC platforms use Git. GitHub, GitLab, GitBucket, SourceForge, LaunchPad, Google Cloud Source Repositories, AWS CodeCommit are popular Git-based internet hosting VSC platforms.
What is GitHub?
GitHub is an internet hosting platform uses Git and some of its own additional features. One of the most popular Git platforms. It has a user-friendly user interface and uses many more features to host software development projects remotely.
Anyone can register to GitHub and create a repository and host a project very easily. Not only that, GitHub repositories are publically available. So anyone can contribute to your project. GitHub is widely used for Open-Source projects. It connects developers around the globe.
Since Git is widely used globally, having git knowledge is critical if you are interested in a software development industry. Without VCS, project management would be a hectic task. Learning Git should be on your task list if you are expecting to enter the software development field.
Check my Article about Introduction to GItHub.