There is a lot of noise about git at the moment. For those who don't know BitMover have revoked the BitKeeper license for Linux kernel development. This has prompted Linus Torvalds to write a replacement called git.

Git is developing rapidly and as it is used for the Linux Kernel it has very high visibility. The big question is 'Is git a competitor to Subversion?'. I think not.

Subversion and Git have very different aims.

Subversion is built around a central repository, everyone knows where the master copy is and works with it. Git is built around a distributed repository and there isn't a master copy, some copies are more important than others, but none is the master.

Subversion is a versioned file system, each revision is a snapshot of a project state. Git is an organised collection of patches.

Subversion is good for projects with a well defined roadmap and a focused development team, git is great for a group of experimenters who wish to take a project in all sorts of directions at the same time and then pick and choose bits to incorporate into a build.

So which is better? Neither! Subversion and git are complementary.