Git as a Distributed Version Control System

To mitigate these consequences distributed version control systems like git were created. Instead of relying on a client/server architecture, a peer-to-peer like approach is used.

Changes and advantages:

• A single git repository includes all meta information about the contained code changes

• Snapshots of the code can be created locally without a network connection

• Code changes can be pushed to and pulled from everywhere

• Every code change can be inspected locally anytime without network connection

• Information is distributed between different clones of the repository

  • Doesn’t mean all repositories share all information

  • Because repositories may hold only parts of the code changes

• There is no single source of truth for a repository anymore

  • Every repository can be the master

  • There doesn’t need to be a master

        flowchart LR
    A[(Repo A)] --> C[(Repo C)]
    B[(Repo B)] --> C
    B <--> A
    C --> A
    

Because of these advantages (and good marketing) git conquered the world of version control systems.