News Git turns 20 as we celebrate decades of open-source software distribution

[Admin]

Git was founded 20 years ago today by Linux Tarvalds and Junio Hamano who continues to maintain the project today.

Git turns 20 as we celebrate decades of open-source software distribution : Read more

 

[bit_user]

If you've ever used Linux software before, odds are you've come across Git.

It's getting a lot less common that people need to checkout & build code they want to run, which is probably the way some regular users might interact with it. The rest of its users are developers, and its use spans all platforms. Microsoft embraced it some time ago, as well as buying the popular github online platform that's built around the tool.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-acquire-github-7-billion,37177.html
​

Over the years, this system has become a staple for delivering open-source tools and applications to PCs across the world.

That's an odd way to put it, because git doesn't really solve the distribution problem. It's a source control system, which roughly equates to software maintenance. Things like: change-tracking, conflict detection, branching, merging, and holding associated metadata.

One of the most unique aspects of Git's design is that it does not rely on a centralized server to operate

Linus also likened its design to that of a filesystem.

but rather is regarded as a "distributed control system."

The first line of the FAQ you linked starts:

"Git is a distributed version control system ..."
​

Version is a key word, as it's fundamental to source control.

 

[ThereAndBackAgain]

It's getting a lot less common that people need to checkout & build code they want to run, which is probably the way some regular users might interact with it. The rest of its users are developers, and its use spans all platforms. Microsoft embraced it some time ago, as well as buying the popular github online platform that's built around the tool.

​

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-acquire-github-7-billion,37177.html​

​

That's an odd way to put it, because git doesn't really solve the distribution problem. It's a source control system, which roughly equates to software maintenance. Things like: change-tracking, conflict detection, branching, merging, and holding associated metadata.


Linus also likened its design to that of a filesystem.


The first line of the FAQ you linked starts:

​

"Git is a distributed version control system ..."​

​

Version is a key word, as it's fundamental to source control.

Yeah, Git was framed in a confusing way in this article. Like you said, it's not a software distribution tool, it's for managing code; it just happens that there are some open source projects that don't publish pre-built executables or DLLs, so you might have to clone them via Git and then build them yourself. But even then, it's not Git that's doing the distribution, it's whatever server (typically Github) that the code is hosted on.