Demystifying Git vs GitHub vs Atlassian Bitbucket vs GitLab

Hello Guys!

Today we will have look over some services which are oftenly used in software development.

If you have worked with codes then you must have come across the words like Git and GitHub. It is also possible that you might have used them as well. But do you know what exactly is Git or GitHub and how they are different from each other? Well, if you don’t, no worries! It’s never late to learn new stuff nor its that tough in this case. In this article on Git vs GitHub, I will be giving you a complete insight of these.

To understand the exact difference you first need to know about version control. So, what do you understand by the term version control?

Version Control

The term Version control refers to a system that records changes to a file or set of files over time called the ‘versions’. In other words, these versions will help you in tracking the changes in your codes/project and if necessary, undo those changes as well. This feature of being able to compare, differentiate and revert changes between two versions of a particular project becomes really helpful when working on a larger project. Larger projects mean more people working on the same code which increases the chances of conflicts. Using version control you can easily prevent these conflicts.

few of the advantages of using version control:

• Version control creates proper workflows which help in preventing the chaos among people using their own development process with different and incompatible tools.
• Each version has a description of what the changes in this version are done. These descriptions help in tracking the changes in the code by version.
• VCS synchronizes the versions and ensures that your changes don’t conflict with others using the same repository.
• VCS helps in keeping the history of changes as other people save new versions of your code. This history can be reviewed to find out by whom, why, and when changes were done.
• The VCS automation features save yours as well as your teams time and generate consistent results by performing testing, code analysis, and deployment whenever any new versions are saved.

What Is Git?

Git?is a version control software which you need to install on your local system in order to use it. For an individual working on a project alone, Git proves to be an excellent software. But what if you are working on a project with a large team. All will be working on the same project but each of you will be having a different version of the same project. Suppose you have made changes in the project directory on your machine and you want to send those changes to your collaborators. Also, you want the changes they make to appear directly in your machine’s project directory. As working on a project, being on the same page with your teammates is very crucial to avoid any type of conflict. So, how you will do that? Well, no worries Git takes care of all but the only condition here is, each of your team members must have Git installed on their systems. Git also is known as distributed version control system which means using Git you can push and pull yours as well as others changes to other people’s machines

Now, using Git you can work on the same copy as your team member. But the copy on which you will be working, won’t reflect any of the changes in the main directory unless and until you pull your collaborator’s changes and push back your own changes.

The major difference between Git and any other VCS like Subversion (SVN), Mercurial, TFS, Perforce, Bazaar etc., is the way Git stores its data. In other systems, information is stored as a list of file-based changes which is also known as?delta-based?version control. But in case of Git, it stores its data in the form of a stream of snapshots of a miniature file system. With Git, whenever you commit or save the state of your project, a snapshot is taken of the present file state and a reference is stored for it. If no changes or updates are done then Git stores a link to the previous file that it has already stored. Following diagram shows how Git stores the versions:

What Is GitHub?

As told,?Git is a version control system?which tracks the changes when working with computer codes while?GitHub is a Web-based Git version control repository hosting service. It provides all of the distributed version control and source code management (SCM) functionalities of Git while topping it with a few of its own features. It is a heaven for the developers where they can store their projects and get connected with like-minded people. You can think it as?“cloud for codes”.

So basically it is a place to store your identical working directories or repositories. It literally is a hub for the Git repositories which you can use, simply by creating a free account on the GitHub. These accounts come with an abundant storage space where you can store your repositories and build a proper profile which holds a great value. By default the repositories are public i.e., everyone can see your codes but you can make it private as well. So if you are a good coder you can upload your own applications and programs and get recognition from others.

It works along with the collaboration of Git. While Git is a command line tool, GitHub is a Web-based graphical interface which provides you with the access control, basic task management tools along with several collaboration features. Moreover, GitHub can host your project’s source codes in various programming languages and keep the track of the each of the changes made to every iteration.

What is Atlassian Bitbucket used for?

Bitbucket is our?Git repository management solution designed?for professional teams. It gives you a central place to manage git repositories, collaborate on your source code and guide you through the development flow. It provides awesome features that include: Acces control to restrict access to your source code. Bitbucket is a web-based version control repository hosting service. It is similar to other web hosting services for version controlling such as?GitHub. Atlassian Company owns BitBucket. It is suitable for software projects that use Mercurial or Git. Bitbucket offers both commercial plans and free accounts. It is also possible to integrate Bitbucket with other Atlassian software such as Jira, Confluence, and Bamboo.

In addition to the Data Center, Bitbucket provides two deployment models. They are called Bitbucket Cloud and Bitbucket Server. Bitbucket Cloud is written in Python and Django web framework. Moreover,?Bitbucket server is a combination of Git Server and web interface product written in Java and built with?Apache Maven. The main difference between Git and Bitbucket is that Git is a distributed version control system, while Bitbucket is a web-based version control repository hosting service for development projects that use Git or Mercurial. In brief, Git helps in code management while Bitbucket helps in hosting version control repositories.

What is GitLab?

GitLab is a web-based DevOps lifecycle tool that provides a Git repository manager providing wiki, issue-tracking and continuous integration and deployment pipeline features, using an open-source license, developed by GitLab Inc. The software was created by Ukrainian developers.

GitLab is a repository that only lets its team of web developers collaborate on codes.?GitLab offers 100% built-in integration. They favor their own integration tools with continuous developments.?GitLab doesn’t allow inner sourcing.

GitLab?has Jira integration that allows Jira Software to be used as an issue tracker for the planning stage while using GitLab for the rest of the DevOps lifecycle: source code management, CI/CD, and monitoring.

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