About & History of Git

About Git

Git is a free, open-source distributed version control system engineered to manage projects of any scale, from small to exceptionally large, with remarkable speed and efficiency. It is renowned for its swift performance and is supported by a comprehensive ecosystem of graphical user interfaces, hosting services, and command-line utilities.

Git is Fast

Initially developed to manage the Linux kernel, Git was engineered from the outset to handle repositories containing tens of millions of lines of code. Speed and performance have consistently been primary design goals, and Git excels at storing repository history efficiently.

Git is Widely Used

According to the 2022 Stack Overflow developer survey, an overwhelming 96% of professional developers use Git, establishing it as the definitive industry standard in software development.

A Huge Ecosystem of Tools

While the core of Git is a command-line tool, its popularity surged in the early 2010s, largely due to hosting services like GitLab and GitHub. Since then, a vast array of GUIs, editor integrations, and other tools have been developed to streamline working with Git.

Free and Open Source

Git is licensed under the GNU General Public License v2.0, an open-source license that ensures the freedom to share and modify the software, guaranteeing that it remains free for all users.

History

Like many great innovations, Git originated from a mix of creative necessity and heated debate. The Linux kernel project, a large-scale open-source initiative, initially relied on patches and archived files to manage software changes. In 2002, the project transitioned to a proprietary Distributed Version Control System (DVCS) known as BitKeeper.

By 2005, the partnership between the Linux kernel community and the company behind BitKeeper had dissolved, leading to the revocation of the tool's free-of-charge license. This event motivated the Linux development community, led by Linus Torvalds, to create their own version control system, incorporating lessons learned from their time with BitKeeper.

The new system was built with several core objectives:

Speed: Operations should feel instantaneous.
Simple Design: Robust yet easy to grasp.
Strong Support for Non-linear Development: Capable of managing thousands of parallel branches with efficiency.
Fully Distributed: Every developer holds a complete copy of the project's history, facilitating offline work.
Scalability for Large Projects: Engineered to handle the massive scale of projects like the Linux kernel in terms of speed and data size.

Since its inception in 2005, Git has matured into a user-friendly tool that preserves its foundational strengths. It is remarkably fast, highly efficient with large-scale projects, and offers a powerful branching system ideal for non-linear development workflows.