Why Git is Distributed ? | Advantages of Git | How Git is different from traditional SCM tools?

Most of version control systems such as SVN, TFVC or CVS work on client-server model. After making code changes, when developers check-in the code changes, it goes to central server. All history is being maintained in a central server, not locally.

Whereas in Git, developers clone the remote repo into local machine which is called local repo. When they clone in local machine, all history is copied into local repo. After making code changes, when they commit the code, it goes into local repo with new version. Then they can push code changes into remote repo where it is available to others. Client and remote server will have full repository.

 

Here below is the difference Git and other control systems:

Area	Git	SVN/TFVC
Repository type	Distributed	Centralized
Full History	Local machine	Central machine
Checkout	They clone the whole repository and do locally changes	Developer checkout working copy which is snapshot of a code
Work Offline	Yes	No
Branching and Merging	Reliable, used often, supports fat forward merge and 3-way merge	Reliable, use with caution
Operations speed	Fast and most are local	Network-dependent
Learning Curve	Needs a bit time	Relatively simple
Staging area	Supported to stash the temporary changes and retrieve it back later	Not supported
Collaboration model	Repository-to-repository interaction	Between working copy and central repo