How to Organize Git Repositories – Best Practices for Version Control

Tags and branches aren't mutual, you can (and IMO usually should) use them both. Tags are there to mark milestones in development. E.g. you open a branch for version 1.2 of your product, and you mark v1.2 Beta, RC1, RC2, Final (and then, if needed, SP1 etc.) with tags on that same branch.

I personally prefer Method 2 as the default approach (although I try to avoid multiple levels of branches, to keep life as simple as possible). Method 1 is just not going to work in real life - tags aren't enough, you need branches. And method 3 is inflexible in that it has only a single stable version at all time, so (unless you combine it with Method 2), you can't maintain multiple (latest and older) versions in parallel. This is required for almost all projects in real life - while you are working on version 2, you should still be able to publish patches / upgrades for v1.9, and often even earlier versions. A lot depends on the type of application of course. We develop a web app, so there is only one production version at any given point in time, still we often juggle with 3 different versions (one in production, one is in UAT getting ready for deployment, one is the latest version on the trunk). It can get way more complex for a desktop/client app with multiple older versions being used - and maintained - in parallel.

The advantages git has come from tossing out a lot of old assumptions about what a VCS should do. The disadvantages git has come from not being able to leverage prior experience and not being able to do things the way you are used to.

If you are going to switch from something else to git, try to start tabula-rasa (though it is impossible to truly do in practice). Evaluate it based on what it does and how well it does it, not on how it does it compared to how you are used to doing it. It's not that you expect too much, it's that your expectations are orthogonal to what git provides. If you're married to GUI operation, you'll be disappointed. Git does have gui tools available, but they don't add much. That's not a failure to provide them so much as there isn't that much that a gui can add. GitK does help, not in day-to-day operations, but rather in visualizing the branch structure and examining or searching history.

Here's a goofy analogy for what I mean by "orthogonal". One of the things you can do with a newspaper is wrap fish in it, or use it to line a birdcage. But those are not essential to the function of a newspaper, those are incidental features of the form it comes in. Expecting git to "check in files", or "allow you to select projects", or provide a "connect to..." is kind of like expecting to be able to wrap fish or line your birdcage with a newspaper's website.