What is the Difference between Git Vs Subversion?


Introduction

It is likely you have heard of Version Control Systems (VCS), or source control if you write or track code for a project. A Version Control System serves primarily as a host and a tool for tracking how a project develops. With VCSs, developers are able to compare and track changes between files, track commits, make proposals, view the history of projects, and revert to previous versions.

Software teams and developers need a good VCS to implement DevOps, continuous delivery and maintain productivity. Git, SVN, Mercurial, and Perforce are a few of the most popular version control systems. You may feel overwhelmed when selecting a VCS for hosting your files. Developers often have strong opinions about how your team should build projects, so it's imperative to establish the foundation.

These key points of comparison between Git vs SVN will help you decide which VCS is right for your projects.

What is Git

Git was designed by Linus Torvalds in 2005 for maintaining Linux kernel development. The core features of Git are full distribution, speed, simplicity, flexibility, and strong support for non-linear development. The origins and history of Git are a significant part of its lore, including how it got its unusual name, why it was created, and more. Using it, you can maintain a local repository to track changes to source code over time. As a result, users can keep both the current and previous version history of files on their own computers by storing a copy of the central repository on their computer.

Git's main advantage is that it does not require network access for its operations, which ensures the integrity of the content. It is important to understand that Git's core purpose is to take the distributed model further than it had ever been before by addressing common problems in a new way.

What is Subversion?

The Subversion version control system allows users to manage their files and track their changes on a central server. It is an open-source project licensed under the Apache license. Since 2000, SVN has been a successful version control tool in the open source community and in the corporate ecosystem, both of which are dominated by CollabNet. In contrast to Git, SVN stores version histories in a centralized location. In the central repository, branches are created in the form of directories. Whenever a user wants to make a change to the code, they do so on their own machines and push it to the central repository when done.

Difference between Git and Subversion

Below are some key differences between Git and Subversion

Git Subversion
Linus Torvalds developed Git in 2005 as an open source distributed version control system. It emphasizes speed and data integrity Subversion is an open-source revision control system available under the Apache license.
The contents of Git repositories are cryptographically hashed to prevent repository corruption due to network problems or disk failures. Cryptographically hashed contents are not present in SVN.
There is a 100 GB limit on the size of the repositories and the tool tracks the changes at a repository level. There is almost equal disk space usage as with Git, and changes are tracked at the file level.
Because Git deals with a lot of data, particularly binary files that change frequently, it is slow. SVN makes it easy to control the vast amount of binary files.
For git operations, we do not need a network connection. The SVN operation requires a network connection for it to run.
A git user has their own copy of the code, which corresponds to their branch. The SVN system maintains a working copy of the repository, as well as a copy in which modifications are made and committed to the primary repository.
Due to its distributed nature and the possibility of altering the local repository's history, it is less secure than SVN. The server stores the data in SVN, making it more secure.
Due to its many ideas and instructions, Git is more difficult to learn. It is considerably easier to learn SVN as compared to git

Conclusion

The Git version control system is undoubtedly one of the most popular and widely used tools for managing projects of all sizes. Using cloned central repositories, this opensource distributed version control system manages and stores code updates on a local repository The SVN version control system is also used for essentially the same purpose, with the exception of how things are stored. In contrast to Git, SVN maintains current and previous versions of files like source code, documentation, and web pages on a central server. Version control with Git is more straightforward than with SVN because users do not have to worry about network access, something that is highly unlikely when it comes to SVN.

Updated on: 11-Oct-2022

210 Views

Kickstart Your Career

Get certified by completing the course

Get Started
Advertisements