Git for Personal Projects – Is Git Overkill for One-Man Projects?

gitsvntoolsversion control

I know, and use, two version control systems: Subversion and git. Subversion, as of now, gets used for personal projects where I am the only developer and git gets used for open source projects and projects where I believe others will also work on the project. This is mostly because of git's amazing forking and merging capabilities, where everyone may work on their own branch; very handy.

Now, I use Subversion for personal projects, as I think git makes little sense there. It seems to be a little bit of overkill. It is OK for me if it is centralized (on my home server, usually) when I am the only developer; I take regular backups anyway. I don't need the ability to make my own branch, the main branch is my branch. Yes, SVN has simple support for branching, but much more powerful support for it makes no sense, I think. Merging can be a pain with it, or at least from my little experience.

Is there any good reason for me to use git on personal projects, or is it just simply overkill?

Best Answer

It's not overkill. The main reason why I started using Git and Mercurial over Subversion for personal projects is that initiating a repository is so much more easier.

Wanna start a new project?

> git init

BAM! No need to set up a repository server nor check in a folder structure to support branching and tags into a subversion repository.

Sharing your project later is just a matter of: git push (other than having a remote repository). Try to do that quickly with subversion!